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THE HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 



EDITED BY 
EDWARD EVERETT HALE, Jr., Ph.D. 

PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND LOGIC IN UNION COLLEGE 




GLOBE SCHOOL BOOK COMPANY 

NEW YORK AND CHICAGO 



THE LIBRARY OF 

CONGRESS, 
Two C0WE8 Received 

lUL. 5 1902 

^CoWfilOHT ENTRY 

ICLASS ^ XXa NO 

h L ^ ^ ^ 

COPY B, 



75 4?a. 



Copyright, 1902, by 
Globe School Book Company. 



M. p. I 






• .• ••" • 



MANHATTAN PRESS 

474 WEST BROADWAY 

NEW YORK 



! PREFATORY NOTE 

s 

S" This volume follows a plan slightly different 
from that of its companion, " English Essays," for 
a reason noted in the Introduction. It gives 
something from our very best essayists, however. 
It will seem that Emerson cannot be wholly un- 
derstood by a young reader. But it is well for 
any one to read something of Emerson, even if 
he do not understand it thoroughly. Lowell's 
essay is a good apology for offering Emerson to 
those who cannot grasp his whole thought. The 
notes are few. Emerson and Lowell would per- 
mit many, but we have here helps only in places 
that did not seem themselves to offer the clew to 
explanation. 

E. E. H., Jr. 



ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

The extracts from " Emerson the Lecturer " 
and "A Great Public Character," by James Rus- 
sell Lowell, are used by special arrangement with 
and permission of Houghton, Mifflin and Com- 
pany, the authorized publishers of Lowell's works. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction . . . . . . . . vii 

From "The Sketch Book/' by Washington Irving: 

Christmas 1 

The Stage-coach 9 

Christmas Eve 19 

Christmas Day ....... 36 

The Christmas Dinner 57 

Westminster Abbey 77 

From *' Prue and I," by George William Curtis : 

Dinner Time 95 

Sea from Shore 118 

Titbottom's Spectacles 149 

From ''My Study Windows," by James Eussell 
Lowell : 

Emerson the Lecturer 187 

A Great Public Character .... 201 

From '^ Essays: First Series," by Ralph Waldo 
Emerson : 

History . . . ^ 223 



V 



INTRODUCTION 

Ik our volume on " English Essayists " we have 
described the essay in what may be said to be the 
stricter sense of the word, or, more correctly, the 
original sense, that of attempt or experiment. 
We there saw that the essay of Addison, Gold- 
smith, Lamb, Thackeray, was no formal treatment 
of some subject, but the easy following out of 
one's idea, whatever it were, without precision or 
particularity, but with the pleasant leisure that 
gives such a taste of the personality of the writer. 
The word " essay " is, of course, now correctly 
used for a wide variety of short pieces of prose, 
from the matured and well-weighed aphorisms of 
Bacon to the brilliant and picturesque studies 
of Macaulay ; indeed, for any treatment that does 
not aim at being finished and complete. But 
what we should call the true essay character is 
that of such writing as we have in the ''Essays 
of Elia" and the "Spectator." 

Of such essays the literature of our own country 
has comparatively little. It may be for many 
reasons. Perhaps Americans, as a nation, are too 
practical to take pleasure in what might be called 

vii 



viii INTRODUCTION 

intellectual idling; it may be that they feel the 
necessity of accomplishing something, or, to put 
the matter in another way, it may be that they 
have not leisure enough either to write anything 
of such an idle character as the essay, or to read 
it. Whatever be the reason, we have on our side 
of the water not many collections like those by 
English writers which may be easily found. 

It is not unnatural, however, that among the 
true essayists should be found Washington Irving. 
Irving was the first great representative man of 
letters in America. This title would belong to 
Franklin were it not that with Franklin literature 
was always something secondary. Franklin was 
a man of action, a practical man. He always 
wanted to accomplish something, and he valued 
his power with his pen, his genius for letters and 
scholarship, according as it helped him to bring 
about his plans in statesmanship and everyday 
life. With Irving it was not so. He was not a 
practical man. It is true that he studied law, 
and that for a time he transacted business, but 
the real interest of his life was literature. He 
devoted himself to literature at first carelessly, 
and, finally, with his whole heart ; and he was 
regarded as essentially a man of letters. Like 
Franklin, he represented his country at one of the 
courts of Europe, but in his case the position of 
minister was offered to him as a compliment to 
him and to the country of which he had written 



INTRODUCTION IX 

SO excellently, and not, as with Franklin, on 
account of the ability to transact difhcult matters 
better than anybody else. 

As a professed man of letters, then, it was not 
remarkable that Irving should have at first ex- 
pressed himself chiefly in essays. He was inter- 
ested in history, and later in life he was noted as 
a historian. He was interested in fiction, too, 
and in his short stories he set a fashion in which 
his countrymen have distinguished themselves. 
He was a humorist, also, but his ambitions rose 
rather above merely humorous writing. He had 
also before him when he began to write, as great 
models of English style, Addison and Goldsmith. 
It was natural that his earlier work should have 
been the essay. But for whatever reason, even in 
the essay his thoughts took rather a more definite 
form than those of his great contemporary. Lamb. 
It is true that his first collection, ''The Sketch 
Book," was made up of miscellaneous essays and 
stories, yet even there a number of his sketches 
were strung together upon the account of his visit 
to Bracebridge Hall, and later he generally took 
some subject, as Bracebridge Hall again, or the 
Alhambra, as a center around which to group 
stories or essays, and he always was quite definite 
in treating his subject. Yet though, in a way, not 
such pure essays as those of Elia, the essays of 
Irving are very attractive bits of writing, and 
carry us along with the writer through all the 



X INTRODUCTION 

festivities and traditions associated with Christ- 
mas, for instance, with much the same interest 
and attraction that would be had by Lamb or 
Montaigne. 

Another of our typical essayists is George Wil- 
liam Curtis. Toward the end of his life Curtis 
wrote every month, for Harper's Magazine^ a paper 
called ''The Editor's Easy Chair." These were 
true essays, not unlike in character Thackeray's 
''Roundabout Papers." Each month he thought 
of some subject around which he might weave his 
ideas and fancies, and the result was a collection 
full of character and thought. But these were 
not Curtis's first experiments in this direction. In 
" Prue and I " we have a series of papers which, 
though put in the form of reveries (shall we call 
them ?) of an old bookkeeper, are quite as much 
essays as if Curtis had written them in his own 
person. Some of them are more of an exercise 
of fancy, it is true, but there is thought in them 
too, perhaps as much as he afterwards put into 
his lay sermons from "The Editor's Easy Chair." 

The essay is a purely literary form, and there 
is no greater man of letters in our own literature 
than James Russell Lowell. Yet his essays, like 
those of his famous contemporary, Macaulay, are 
too definite treatments of specific subjects to be 
called essays in the narrower sense. Lowell wrote 
on Democracy or on Chaucer, on the birds of his 
garden or the books on his shelves, because he was 



INTRODUCTION XI 

absorbed for the time in those things; he rarely 
allowed his thoughts to wander where they would, 
without guide or goal. Lowell was in truth a 
good deal of a scholar ; he was always interested 
in telling what was the fact about the man, for 
instance, of whom he wrote. He was interested 
in the man's work, and he was always curious as 
to his character, wished to know it and write of 
it. Much of his writing, however, has the true 
essay-quality, for his mind was richly stored, and 
he could never get very far without reminiscence 
or allusion. And sometimes when he left the 
criticism of one or another author and took some 
less definite subject, his work might almost be 
thought of as an essay in the narrower sense. 

But probably the most famous of American 
essays, the most widely known, are those of Emer- 
son. They have certainly something of the true 
essay-quality about them. They move freely; 
they are unconstrained. But still, like the essays 
of Bacon, they are a little too concise or too epi- 
grammatic to be quite the free movement of 
thought. They are also a little too carefully set 
together. It is not the disinterested thinking of 
the man who likes to think ; Emerson was far too 
practical for that. We may always think of him 
as an idealist, but he was very practical too. He 
always seems to have^ in mind the desire to en- 
courage and strengthen and help our better nature. 
He was no idler or man of leisure; his earnest 



xii INTRODUCTION 

desire was to make America more vigorous, strong, 
and manly in its living and thinking. It is true 
that he never attempted a definitely systematic 
work on morals or human nature : he put his 
essays together without much thought of care- 
fully arranged plan, well satisfied if each piece of 
writing contained the spirit of its topic and the 
incentive to a more lively and active appreciation 
of it. This gives us something of the true man- 
ner of his thought, although the movement of his 
style hardly seems the free movement of the 
essayist. But his essays are very personal, as 
indeed the sincere writing of any man must tend 
to be who has a strong personality. 

Thus in each of our four essayists we have 
found something of the true essay-quality, in each 
case with a good deal of something else. We 
may appreciate it surely, this common quality, 
without losing sight of what each one particularly 
has for us, — the old-fashioned ease of Irving, the 
charm of grave and gay imagination that makes 
us wonder why Curtis was not a poet, the richly 
reminiscent mind of Lowell, the surcharged in- 
tensity of Emerson. It is well to read them 
together; for though they have all something in 
common, the general character, yet their own 
traits are by no means lost in the background. 



FROM ^^THE SKETCH BOOK" 



CHRISTMAS 

But is old, old, good old Christmas gone ? Nothing but the 
hair of his good, gray, old head and beard left ? Well, I will 
have that, seeing I cannot have more of him. 

Hue and Cry after Christmas. 

A man might then behold 

At Christmas, in each hall, 
Good fires to curb the cold. 

And meat for great and small. 
The neighbors were friendly bidden, 

And all had welcome true. 
The poor from the gates were not chidden, 

When this old cap was new. 

Old Song. 

There is nothing in England that exercises a 
more delightful spell over my imagination than 
the lingerings of the holiday customs and rural 
games of former times. They recall the pictures 
my fancy used to draw in the May morning of 
life, when as yet I only knew the world through 
books, and believed it to be all that poets had 
painted it ; and they bring with them the flavor 
of those honest days of yore, in which, perhaps 
with equal fallacy, I am apt to think the world 



2 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

was more homebred, social, and joyous than at 
present. I regret to say that they are daily grow- 
ing more and more faint, being gradually worn 
away by time, but still more obliterated by modern 
fashion. They resemble those picturesque morsels 
of Gothic architecture, which we see crumbling in 
various parts of the country, partly dilapidated 
by the waste of ages, and partly lost in the addi- 
tions and alterations of latter days. Poetry, how- 
ever, clings with cherishing fondness about the 
rural game and holiday revel, from which it has 
derived so many of its themes — as the ivy winds 
its rich foliage about the Gothic arch and molder- 
ing tower, gratefully repaying their support, by 
clasping together their tottering remains, and, as 
it were, embalming them in verdure. 

Of all the old festivals, however, that of Christ- 
mas awakens the strongest and most heartfelt 
associations. There is a tone of solemn and 
sacred feeling that blends with our conviviality, 
and lifts the spirit to a state of hallowed and ele- 
vated enjoyment. The services of the church 
about this season are extremely tender and in- 
spiring : they dwell on the beautiful story of the 
origin of our faith, and the pastoral scenes that 
accompanied its announcement ; they gradually 
increase in fervor and pathos during the season 
of Advent, until they break forth in full jubilee 
on the morning that brought peace and good- will 
to men. I do not know a grander effect of music 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 3 

on the moral feelings than to hear the full choir 
and the pealing organ performing a Christmas 
anthem in a cathedral, and filling every part of 
the vast pile with triumphant harmony. 

It is a beautiful arrangement, also, derived from 
days of yore, that this festival, which commemo- 
rates the announcement of the religion of peace 
and love, has been made the season for gathering 
together of family connections, and drawing closer 
again those bands of kindred hearts, which the 
cares and pleasures and sorrows of the world are 
continually operating to cast loose ; of calling 
back the children of a family, who have launched 
forth in life, and wandered widely asunder, once 
more to assemble about the paternal hearth, that 
rallying-place of the affections, there to grow 
young and loving again among the endearing 
mementos of childhood. 

There is something in the very season of the 
year, that gives a charm to the festivity of Christ-' 
mas. At other times, we derive a great portion 
of our pleasures from the mere beauties of nature. 
Our feelings sally forth and dissipate themselves 
over the sunny landscape, and we ''live abroad 
and everywhere.'' The song of the bird, the 
murmur of the stream, the breathing fragrance 
of spring, the soft voluptuousness of summer, the 
golden pomp of autumn ; earth with its mantle of 
refreshing green, and heaven with its deep, deli- 
cious blue and its cloudy magnificence, — all fill 



4 HAWTHOBNE CLASSICS 

US with mute but exquisite delight, and we revel 
in the luxury of mere sensation. But in the 
depth of winter, when nature lies despoiled of 
every charm, and wrapped in her shroud of sheeted 
snow, we turn for our .gratifications to moral 
sources.^ The dreariness and desolation of the 
landscape, the short, gloomy days and darksome 
nights, while they circumscribe our wanderings, 
shut in our feelings also from rambling abroad, 
and make us more keenly disposed for the pleas- 
ures of the social circle. Our thoughts are 
more concentrated ; our friendly sympathies more 
aroused. We feel more sensibly the charm of 
each other's society, and are brought more closely 
together by dependence on each other for enjoy- 
ment. Heart calleth unto heart, and we draw 
our pleasures from the deep wells of living kind- 
ness which lie in the quiet recesses of our bosoms ; 
and which, when resorted to, furnish forth the 
pure element of domestic felicity. 

The pitchy gloom without makes the heart 
dilate on entering the room filled with the glow 
and warmth of the evening fire. The ruddy 
blaze diffuses an artificial summer and sunshine 
through the room, and lights up each countenance 
in a kindlier welcome. Where does the honest 
face of hospitality expand into a broader and more 
cordial smile — where is the shy glance of love 
more sweetly eloquent — than by the winter fire- 

1 One should read Lowell's " A Good Word for Winter " here. 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 5 

side ? and as the hollow blast of wintry wind 
rushes through the hall, claps the distant door, 
whistles about the casement, and rumbles down 
the chimney, what can be more grateful than that 
feeling of sober and sheltered security, with which 
we look round upon the comfortable chamber and 
the scene of domestic hilarity ? 

The English, from the great prevalence of rural 
habits throughout every class of society, have 
always been fond of those festivals and holidays 
which agreeably interrupt the stillness of country 
life ; and they were in former days particularly 
observant of the religious and social rights of 
Christmas. It is inspiring to read even the dry 
details which some antiquaries have given of the 
quaint humors, the burlesque pageants, the com- 
plete abandonment to mirth and good fellowship, 
with which this festival was celebrated. It 
seemed to throw open every door, and unlock 
every heart. It brought the peasant and the 
peer together, and blended all ranks in one warm 
generous flow of joy and kindness. The old halls 
of castles and manor-houses resounded with the 
harp and the Christmas carol, and their ample 
boards groaned under the weight of hospitality. 
Even the poorest cottage welcomed the festive 
season with green decorations of bay and holly — 
the cheerful fire glanced its rays through the 
lattice, inviting the passenger to raise the latch, 
and join the gossip knot huddled round the hearth 



6 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

beguiling the long evening with legendary jokes^ 
and oft-told Christmas tales. 

One of the least pleasing effects of modern re- 
finement is the havoc it has made among the 
hearty old holiday customs. It has completely 
taken off the sharp touchings and spirited reliefs 
of these embellishments of life, and has worn down 
society into a more smooth and polished, but cer- 
tainly a less characteristic surface. Many of the 
games and ceremonials of Christmas have entirely 
disappeared, and, like the sherris sack of old Fal- 
staff, are becoming matters of speculation and 
dispute among commentators. They flourished in 
times full of spirit and lustihood, when men en- 
joyed life roughly, but heartily and vigorously : 
times wild and picturesque, which have furnished 
poetry with its richest materials, and the drama 
with its most attractive variety of characters and 
manners. The world has become more worldly. 
There is more of dissipation and less of enjoyment. 
Pleasure has expanded into a broader, but a shal- 
lower stream, and has forsaken many of those 
deep and quiet channels, where it flowed sweetly 
through the calm bosom of domestic life. Society 
has acquired a more enlightened and elegant tone ; 
but it has lost many of its strong local peculiari- 
ties, its homebred feelings, its honest fireside 
delights. The traditionary customs of golden- 
hearted antiquity, its feudal hospitalities, and 
lordly wassailings, have passed away with the 



AMEBIC AN ESSAYS 7 

baronial castles and stately manor-houses in which 
they were celebrated. They comported with the 
shadowy hall, the great oaken gallery, and the 
tapestried parlor, but are unfitted for the light, 
showy saloons and gay drawing-rooms of the 
modern villa. 

Shorn, however, as it is, of its ancient and fes- 
tive honors, Christmas is still a period of delight- 
ful excitement in England. It is gratifying to 
see that home feeling completely aroused which 
holds so powerful a place in every English bosom. 
The preparations making on every side for the 
social board that is again to unite friends and 
kindred — the presents of good cheer passing and 
repassing, those tokens of regard and quickeners 
of kind feelings — the evergreens distributed 
about houses and churches, emblems of peace 
and gladness — all these have the most pleasing 
effect in producing fond associations, and kindling 
benevolent sympathies. Even the sound of the 
Waits, rude as may be their minstrelsy, breaks 
upon the midwatches of a winter night with the 
effect of perfect harmony. As I have been awak- 
ened by them in that still and solemn hour "when 
deep sleep falleth upon man," I have listened with 
a hushed delight, and connecting them with the 
sacred and joyous occasion, have almost fancied 
them into another celestial choir, announcing 
peace and good- will to mankind. How delight- 
fully the imagination, when wrought upon by 



8 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

these moral influences, turns everything to 
melody and beauty ! The very crowing of the 
cock, heard sometimes in the profound repose of 
the country, ''telling the nightwatches to his 
feathery dames," was thought by the common 
people to announce the approach of the sacred 
festival : — • 

" Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes 
Wherein our Saviour's birth was celebrated, 
This bird of dawning singe th all night long : 
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad ; 
The nights are w^holesome — then no planets strike, 
No fairy takes, no witch hath power to charm. 
So hallowed and so gracious is the time." 

Hamlet, I., i., 158-164. 

Amidst the general call to happiness, the bustle 
of the spirits, and stir of the affections, which 
prevail at this period, what bosom can remain 
insensible ? It is, indeed, the season of regener- 
ated feeling — the season for kindling not merely 
the fire of hospitality in the hall, but the genial 
flame of charity in the heart. The scene of early 
love again rises green to memory beyond the ster- 
ile waste of years, and the idea of home, fraught 
with the fragrance of home-dwelling joys, reani- 
mates the drooping spirit, as the Arabian breeze 
will sometimes waft the freshness of the distant 
fields to the weary pilgrim of the desert. 

Stranger and sojourner as I am in the land — 
though for me no social hearth may blaze, no 
hospitable roof throw open its doors, nor the 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 9 

warm grasp of friendship welcome me at the 
threshold — yet I feel the influence of the season 
beaming into my soul from the happy looks of 
those around me. Surely happiness is reflective, 
like the light of heaven ; and every countenance 
bright with smiles, and glowing with innocent 
enjoyment, is a mirror transmitting to others the 
rays of a supreme and ever shining benevolence. 
He who can turn churlishly away from contem- 
plating the felicity of his fellow-beings, and can 
sit down darkling and repining in his loneliness 
when all around is joyful, may have his moments 
of strong excitement and selfish gratification, but 
he wants the genial and social sympathies which 
constitute the charm of a merry Christmas. 



THE STAGE-COACH. 

Omne bene 

Sine poenS 
Tempus est ludendi. 

Venit hora 

Absque mora 
Libros deponendi.^ 

Old Holiday School Song. 

In the preceding paper, I have made some 
general observations on the Christmas festivities 

1 A free translation would run something as follows :— 
Tasks and troubles all are done ; 

And the time tor play, 
Long delayed, is now begun : 

Put the books away. 



10 HAWTHOBNE CLASSICS 

of England, and am tempted to illustrate them 
by some anecdotes of a Christmas passed in the 
country; in perusing which, I would most courte- 
ously invite my reader to lay aside the austerity 
of wisdom, and to put on that genuine holiday 
spirit, which is tolerant of folly and anxious only 
for amusement. 

In the course of a December tour in Yorkshire, 
I rode for a long distance in one of the public 
coaches, on the day preceding Christmas. The 
coach was crowded, both inside and out, with 
passengers, who, by their talk, seemed principally 
bound to the mansions of relations or friends, to 
eat the Christmas dinner. It was loaded also 
with hampers of game, and baskets and boxes of 
delicacies ; and hares hung dangling their long 
ears about the coachman's box, presents from 
distant friends for the impending feast. I had 
three fine rosy-cheeked school-boys for my fellow- 
passengers inside, full of the buxom health and 
manly spirit which I have observed in the children 
of this country. They were returning home for 
the holidays, in high glee, and promising them- 
selves a world of enjoyment. It was delightful 
to hear the gigantic plans of pleasure of the little 
rogues, and the impracticable feats they were to 
perform during their six weeks' emancipation from 
the abhorred thralldom of book, birch, and peda- 
gogue. They were full of the anticipations of the 
meeting with the family and household, down to 



AMEBIC AN ESSAYS 11 

the very cat and dog ; and of the joy they were to 
give their sisters by the presents with which their 
pockets were crammed ; but the meeting to which 
they seemed to look forward with the greatest im- 
patience was with Bantam, which I found to be a 
pony, and according to their talk, possessed of 
more virtues than any steed since the days of 
Bucephalus. How he could trot ! how he could 
run ! and then such leaps as he would take — 
there was not a hedge in the whole country thait 
he could not clear. 

They were under the particular guardianship of 
the coachman, to whom, whenever an opportunity 
presented, they addressed a host of questions, and 
pronounced him one of the best fellows in the 
whole world. Indeed, I could not but notice the 
more than ordinary air of bustle and importance 
of the coachman, who wore his hat a little on one 
side, and had a large bunch of Christmas greens 
stuck in the button-hole of his coat. He is always 
a personage full of mighty care and business ; but 
he is particularly so during this season, having so 
many commissions to execute in consequence of 
the great interchange of presents. And here, per- 
haps, it may not be unacceptable to my untraveled 
readers, to have a sketch that may serve as a gen- 
eral representation of this very numerous and im- 
portant class of functionaries, who have a dress, a 
manner, a language, an air, peculiar to themselves, 
and prevalent throughout the fraternity ; so that, 



12 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

wherever an English stage-coachman may be seen, 
he cannot be mistaken for one of any other craft or 
mystery. 

He has commonly a broad full face, curiously 
mottled with red, as if the blood had been forced 
by hard feeding into every vessel of the skin ; he 
is swelled into jolly dimensions by frequent pota- 
tions of malt liquors, and his bulk is still farther 
increased by a multiplicity of coats, in which he is 
buried like a cauliflower, the upper one reaching 
to his heels. He wears a broad-brimmed, low- 
crowned hat, a huge roll of colored handkerchief 
about his neck, knowingly knotted and tucked in 
at the bosom ; and has in summer-time a large 
bouquet of flowers in his button-hole, the present, 
most probably, of some enamored country lass. 
His waistcoat is commonly of some bright color, 
striped, and his small-clothes extend far below the 
knees, to meet a pair of jockey boots which reach 
about half-way up his legs. 

All this costume is maintained with much pre- 
cision ; he has a pride in having his clothes of ex- 
cellent materials, and notwithstanding the seeming 
grossness of his appearance, there is still discernible 
that neatness and propriety of person, which is 
almost inherent in an Englishman. He enjoys 
great consequence and consideration along the 
road ; has frequent conferences with the village 
housewives, who look upon him as a man of great 
trust and dependence ; and he seems to have a 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 13 

good understanding with every bright-eyed coun- 
try lass. The moment he arrives where the horses 
are to be changed, he throws down the reins with 
something of an air, and abandons the cattle to 
the care of the hostler ; his duty being merely to 
drive them from one stage to another. When off 
the box, his hands are thrust in the pockets of his 
great-coat, and he rolls about the inn-yard with an 
air of the most absolute lordliness. Here he is 
generally surrounded by an admiring throng of 
hostlers, stable-boys, shoeblacks, and those name- 
less hangers-on, that infest inns and taverns, and 
run errands, and do all kind of odd jobs, for the 
privilege of battening on the drippings of the 
kitchen and the leakage of the tap-room. These 
all look up to him as to an oracle ; treasure up his 
cant phrases ; echo his opinions about horses and 
other topics of jockey lore ; and, above all, en- 
deavor to imitate his air and carriage. Every 
ragamuffin that has a coat to his back, thrusts his 
hands in the pockets, rolls in his gait, talks slang, 
and is an embryo Coachey. 

Perhaps it might be owing to the pleasing 
serenity that reigned in my own mind, that I fan- 
cied I saw cheerfulness in every countenance 
throughout the journey. A stage-coach, how- 
ever, carries animation always with it, and puts 
the world in motion as it whirls along. The horn, 
sounded at the entrance of a village, produces a 
general bustle. Some hasten forth to meet friends ; 



14 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

some with bundles and bandboxes to secure places, 
and in the hurry of the moment can hardly take 
leave of the group that accompanies them. In the 
mean time, the coachman has a world of small com- 
missions to execute ; sometimes he delivers a hare 
or pheasant; sometimes jerks a small parcel or 
newspaper to the door of a public house ; and 
sometimes with knowing leer and words of sly im- 
port, hands to some half -blushing, half-laughing 
housemaid, an odd-shaped billet-doux from some 
rustic admirer. As the coach rattles through the 
village, every one runs to the window, and you 
have glances on every side of fresh country faces, 
and blooming giggling girls. At the corners are 
assembled juntos of village idlers and wise men, 
who take their stations there for the important 
purpose of seeing company pass : but the sagest 
knot is generally at the blacksmith's, to whom the 
passing of the coach is an event fruitful of much 
speculation. The smith, with the horse's heel in 
his lap, pauses as the vehicle whirls by ; the cy clops ^ 
round the anvil suspend their ringing hammers, 
and suffer the iron to grow cool ; and the sooty 
spectre in brown paper cap, laboring at the bel- 
lows, leans on the handle for a moment, and per- 
mits the asthmatic engine to heave a long-drawn 
sigh, while he glares through the murky smoke 
and sulphureous gleams of the smithy. 

Perhaps the impending holiday might have 

1 The'Cyclopes were the workmen of Vulcan's stithy. 



AMEBIC AN ESSAYS 15 

given a more than usual animation to the country, 
for it seemed to me as if everybody was in good 
looks and good spirits. Game, poultry, and other 
luxuries of the table, were in brisk circulation in 
the villages ; the grocers', butchers', and fruiterers' 
shops were thronged with customers. The house- 
wives were stirring briskly about, putting their 
dwellings in order ; and the glossy branches of 
holly, with their bright red berries, began to ap- 
pear at the windows. The scene brought to mind 
an old writer's account of Christmas preparations. 
'' Now capons and hens, besides turkeys, geese, 
and ducks, with beef and mutton, must all die 
— for in twelve days a multitude of people will 
not be fed with a little. Now plums and spice, 
sugar and honey, square it among pies and broth. 
Now or never must music be in tune, for the youth 
must dance and sing to get them a heat, while the 
aged sit by the fire. The country maid leaves 
half her market, and must be sent again, if she 
forgets a pair of cards on Christmas eve. Great 
is the contention of Holly and Ivy, whether master 
or dame wears the breeches. Dice and cards bene- 
fit the butler ; and if the cook do not lack wit, he 
will sweetly lick his fingers." 

I was roused from this fit of luxurious medi- 
tation by a shout from my little traveling com- 
panions. They had been looking out of the coach- 
windows for the last few miles, recognizing every 
tree and cottage as they approaclied home, and 



16 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

now there was a general burst of joy — '^ There's 
John ! and there's old Carlo ! and there's Ban- 
tam ! " cried the happy little rogues, clapping 
their hands. 

At the end of a lane, there was an old sober- 
looking servant in livery, waiting for them ; he 
was accompanied by a superannuated pointer, and 
by the redoubtable Bantam, a little old rat of a 
pony, with a shaggy mane and long rusty tail, who 
stood dozing quietly by the road-side, little dream- 
ing of the bustling times that awaited him. 

I was pleased to see the fondness with which the 
little fellows leaped about the steady old footman, 
and hugged the pointer, who wriggled his whole 
body for joy. But Bantam was the great object 
of interest ; all wanted to mount at once, and it 
was with some difficulty that John arranged that 
they should ride by turns, and the eldest should 
ride first. 

Off they set at last ; one on the pony, with the 
dog bounding and barking before him, and the 
others holding John's hands ; both talking at once 
and overpowering him with questions about home, 
and with school anecdotes. I looked after them 
with a feeling in which I do not know whether 
pleasure or melancholy predominated ; for I was 
reminded of those days when, like them, I had 
neither known care nor sorrow, and a holiday was 
the summit of earthly felicity. We stopped a few 
moments afterwards, to water the horses ; and on 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 17 

resuming our route, a turn of the road brought us 
in sight of a neat country-seat. I could just dis- 
tinguish the forms of a lady and two young girls 
in the portico, and I saw my little comrades, with 
Bantam, Carlo, and old John, trooping along the 
carriage road. I leaned out of the coach-window, 
in hopes of witnessing the happy meeting, but a 
grove of trees shut it from my sight. 

In the evening we reached a village where I had 
determined to pass the night. As we drove into 
the great gateway of the inn, I saw, on one side, 
the light of a rousing kitchen fire beaming through 
a window. I entered, and admired for the hun- 
dredth time, that picture of convenience, neatness, 
and broad honest enjoyment, the kitchen of an 
English inn. It was of spacious dimensions, hung 
round with copper and tin vessels highly polished, 
and decorated here and there with a Christmas 
green. Hams, tongues, and flitches of bacon were 
suspended from the ceiling ; a srnoke-jack made 
its ceaseless clanking beside the fire-place, and a 
clock ticked in one corner. A well-scoured deal 
table extended along one side of the kitchen, with 
a cold round of beef, and other hearty viands, 
upon it, over which two foaming tankards of ale 
seemed mounting guard. Travelers of inferior 
order were preparing to attack this stout repast, 
whilst others sat smoking and gossiping over their 
ale on two high-backed, oaken settles beside the 
fire. Trim housemaids were hurrying backwards 



18 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

and forwards, under the directions of a bustling 
landlady ; but still seizing an occasional moment 
to exchange a flippant word, and have a rallying 
laugh, with the group round the fire. The scene 
completely realized Poor Robin's humble idea of 
the comforts of mid-winter : — 

Now trees their leafy hats do bare 
To reverence Winter's silver hair ; 
A handsome hostess, merry host, 
A pot of ale and now a toast. 
Tobacco and a good coal fire, 
Are things this season doth require.^ 

I had not been long at the inn, when a post- 
chaise drove up to the door. A young gentleman 
stepped out, and by the light of the lamps I caught 
a glimpse of a countenance which I thought I knew. 
I moved forward to get a nearer view, when his 
eye caught mine. I was not mistaken ; it was 
Frank Bracebridge, a sprightly, good-humored, 
young fellow, with whom I had once traveled on 
the continent. Our meeting was extremely cor- 
dial, for the countenance of an old fellow-traveler 
always brings up the recollection of a thousand 
pleasant scenes, odd adventures, and excellent 
jokes. To discuss all these in a transient inter- 
view at an inn, was impossible ; and finding that 
I was not pressed for time and was merely making 
a tour of observation, he insisted that I should 
give him a day or two at his father's country-seat, 

1 Poor Robin's Almanack, 1694. 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 19 

to which he was going to pass the holidays, and 
which lay at a few miles' distance. '' It is better 
than eating a solitary Christmas dinner at an inn," 
said he, "and I can assure you of a hearty wel- 
come, in something of the old-fashioned style." 
His reasoning was cogent, and I must confess the 
preparation I had seen for universal festivity and 
social enjoyment, had made me feel a little impa- 
tient of my loneliness. I closed, therefore, at once, 
with his invitation; the chaise drove up to the 
door, and in a few moments I was on my way to 
the family mansion of the Bracebridges. 



CHRISTMAS EVE 

Saint Erancis and Saint Benedight 
Blesse this house from wicked wight ; 
From the night-mare and the goblin, 
That is hight good fellow Robin ; 
Keep it from all evil spirits, 
Fairies, weasels, rats, and ferrets : 

From curfew-time 

To the next prime. 

Cartwright. 

It was a brilliant moonlight night, but ex- 
tremely cold; our chaise whirled rapidly over 
the frozen ground ; the post-boy smacked his 
whip incessantly, and a part of the time his horses 
were on a gallop. " He knows where he is going," 
said my companion, laughing, ''and is eager to 



\ 

20 HAWTHOBNE CLASSICS ' 

arrive in time for some of the merriment an|^ good 
cheer of the servants' hall. My father, you^^ must 
know, is a bigoted devotee of the old school, and 
prides himself upon keeping up something of old 
English hospitality. He is a tolerable specimen 
of what you will rarely meet with nowadays in 
its purity, — the old English country gentleman ; 
for our men of fortune spend so much of their 
time in town, and fashion is carried so much into 
the country, that the strong rich peculiarities of 
ancient rural life are almost polished away: My 
father, however, from early years, took honest 
Peacham ^ for his text-book, instead of Chester- 
field ; he determined in his own mind, that there 
was no condition more truly honorable and envi- 
able than that of a country gentleman on his pater- 
nal lands, and, therefore, passes the whole of his 
time on his estate. He is a strenuous advocate 
for the revival of the old rural games and holiday 
observances, and is deeply read in the writers, 
ancient and modern, who have treated on the sub- 
ject. Indeed, his favorite range of reading is 
among the authors who flourished at least two 
centuries since; who, he insists, wrote and thought 
more like true Englishmen than any of their suc- 
cessors. He even regrets sometimes that he had 
not been born a few centuries earlier, when Eng- 
land was itself, and had its peculiar manners and 
customs. As he lives at some distance from the 

iPeacham's "Complete Gentleman," 1622. 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 21 

main road, in rather a lonely part of the country, 
without any rival gentry near him, he has that 
most enviable of all blessings to an Englishman, 
an opportunity of indulging the bent of his own 
humor without molestation. Being representa- 
tive of the oldest family in the neighborhood, and 
a great part of the peasantry being his tenants, he 
is much looked up to, and, in general, is known 
simply by the appellation of ' The 'Squire' ; a title 
which has been accorded to the head of the family 
since time immemorial. I think it best to give 
you these hints about my worthy old father, to 
prepare you for any little eccentricities that might 
otherwise appear absurd." 

We had passed for some time along the wall 
of a park, and at length the chaise stopped at the 
gate. It was in a heavy magnificent old style, of 
iron bars, fancifully wrought at top into flourishes 
and flowers. The huge square columns that sup- 
ported the gate were surmounted by the family 
crest. Close adjoining was the porter's lodge, 
sheltered under dark fir trees, and almost buried 
in shrubbery. 

The post-boy rang a large porter's bell, which 
resounded through the still frosty air, and was 
answered by the distant barking of dogs, with 
which the mansion-house seemed garrisoned. An 
old woman immediately appeared at the gate. 
As the moonlight fell strongly upon her, I had a 
full view of a little primitive dame, dressed very 



22 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

much in antique taste, with a neat kerchief and 
stomacher, and iier silver hair peeping from under 
a cap of snowy whiteness. She came courtesying 
forth with many expressions of simple joy at see- 
ing her young master. Her husband, it seemed, 
was up at, the house, keeping Christmas eve in the 
servants' hall ; they could not do without him, as 
he was the best hand at a song and story in the 
household. 

My friend proposed that we should alight, and 
walk through the park to the Hall, which was at 
no great distance, while the chaise should follow 
on. Our road wound through a noble avenue of 
trees, among the naked branches of which the 
moon glittered as she rolled through the deep 
vault of a cloudless sky. The lawn beyond was 
sheeted with a slight covering of snow, which here 
and there sparkled as the moon-beams caught a 
frosty crystal ; and at a distance might be seen a 
thin transparent vapor, stealing up from the low 
grounds, and threatening gradually to shroud the 
landscape. 

My companion looked round him with trans- 
port : — ''How often," said he, ''have I scam- 
pered up this avenue, on returning home on school 
vacations ! How often have I played under these 
trees when a boy ! I feel a degree of filial rever- 
ence for them, as we look up to those who have 
cherished us in childhood. My father was always 
scrupulous in exacting our holidays, and having us 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 23 

around him on family festivals. He used to direct 
and superintend our games with the strictness that 
some parents do the studies of their children. He 
was very particular that we should play the old 
English games according to their original form ; 
and consulted old books for precedent and author- 
ity for every ' merrie disport ' ; yet, I assure you, 
there never was pedantry so delightful. It was 
the policy of the good old gentleman to make his 
children feel that home was the happiest place in 
the world, and I value this delicious home-feeling 
as one of the choicest gifts a parent could bestow." 
We were interrupted by the clamor of a troop 
of dogs of all sorts and sizes, " mongrel, puppy, 
whelp and hound, and curs of low degree," that, 
disturbed by the ringing of the porter's bell and 
the rattling of the chaise, came bounding open- 
mouthed across the lawn. 

" The little dogs and all, 



Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart, see, they bark at me ! " 

cried Bracebridge, laughing. At the sound of his 
voice, the bark was changed into a yelp of delight, 
and in a moment he was surrounded and almost 
overpowered by the caresses of the faithful ani- 
mals. 

We had now come in full view of the old family 
mansion, partly thrown in deep shadow, and partly 
lit up by the cold moonshine. It was an irregular 
building of some magnitude, and seemed to be of 



24 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

the architecture of different periods. One wing 
was evidently very ancient, with lieavy stone- 
shafted bow windows jutting out and overrun 
with ivy, from among the foliage of which the 
small diamond-shaped panes of glass glittered with 
the moon-beams. The rest of the house was in 
the French taste of Charles the Second's time, 
having been repaired and altered, as my friend 
told me, by one of his ancestors, who returned 
with that monarch at the Restoration. The 
grounds about the house were laid out in the old 
formal manner of artificial flower-beds, clipped 
shrubberies, raised terraces, and heavy stone bal- 
ustrades, ornamented with urns, a leaden statue 
or two, and a jet of water. The old gentleman, I 
was told, was extremely careful to preserve this 
obsolete finery in all its original state. He ad- 
mired this fashion in gardening ; it had an air of 
magnificence, was courtly and noble, and befitting 
good old family stjde. The boasted imitation of 
nature and modern gardening had sprung up w^ith 
modern republican notions, but did not suit a mon- 
archical government ; it smacked of the leveling 
system. I could not help smiling at this introduc- 
tion of politics into gardening, though I expressed 
some apprehension that I should find the old gen- 
tleman rather intolerant in his creed. Frank 
assured me, however, that it was almost the only 
instance in which he had ever heard his father 
meddle with politics ; and he believed he had got 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 25 

this notion from a member of Parliament, who 
once passed a few weeks with him. The 'Squire 
was glad of any argument to defend his clipped 
yew trees and formal terraces, which had been 
occasionally attacked by modern landscape gar- 
deners. 

As we approached the house, we heard the 
sound of music, and now and then a burst of 
laughter, from one end of the building. This, 
Bracebridge said, must proceed from the servants' 
hall, where a great deal of revelry was permitted, 
and even encouraged, by the 'Squire, throughout 
the twelve days of Christmas, provided every 
thing was done conformably to ancient usage. 
Here were kept up the old games of hoodman 
blind, shoe the wild mare, hot cockles, steal the 
white loaf, bob-apple, and snap-dragon ; the Yule 
clog, and Christmas candle, were regularly burnt, 
and the mistletoe, with its white berries, hung up, 
to the imminent peril of all the pretty house- 
maids.^ 

So intent were the servants upon their sports, 
that we had to ring repeatedly before we could 
make ourselves heard. On our arrival being 
announced, the 'Squire came out to receive us, 
accompanied by his two other sons : one a young 
officer in the army, home on leave of absence ; 

iThe mistletoe is still hung up in farm-houses and kitchens, at 
Christmas ; and the young men have the privilege of kissing the 
girls under it, plucking each time a berry from the bush. When 
the berries are all plucked, the privilege ceases. — Irving's Note. 



26 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

the other an Oxonian, just from the university. 
The 'Squire was a fine, healthy-looking, old gen- 
tleman, with silver hair curling lightly round an 
open florid countenance ; in which a physiogno- 
mist, with the advantage, like myself, of a pre- 
vious hint or two, might discover a singular 
mixture of whim and benevolence. 

The family meeting was warm and affectionate ; 
as the evening was far advanced, the 'Squire 
would not permit us to change our traveling 
dresses, but ushered us at once to the company, 
which was assembled in a large, old-fashioned hall. 
It was composed of different branches of a numer- 
ous familj^ connection, where there were the usual 
proportions of old uncles and aunts, comfortable 
married dames, superannuated spinsters, blooming 
country cousins, half-fledged striplings, and bright- 
eyed boarding-school hoydens. They were vari- 
ously occupied : some at a round game of cards ; 
others conversing round the fire-place ; at one end 
of the hall was a group of the young folks, some 
nearly grown up, others of a more tender and bud- 
ding age, fully engrossed by a merry game ; and 
a profusion of wooden horses, penny trumpets, 
and tattered dolls about the floor, showed traces 
of a troop of little fairy beings, who, having frol- 
icked through a happy day, had been carried off 
to slumber through a peaceful night. 

While the mutual greetings were going on be- 
tween young Bracebridge and his relatives, I had 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 27 

time to scan the apartment. I have called it a 
hall, for so it had certainly been in old times, and 
the 'Squire had evidently endeavored to restore it 
to something of its primitive state. Over the 
heavy projecting fire-place was suspended a pic- 
ture of a warrior in armor, standing by a white 
horse, and on the opposite wall hung a helmet, 
buckler, and lance. At one end an enormous pair 
of antlers were inserted in the wall, the branches 
serving as hooks on which to suspend hats, whips, 
and spurs ; and in the corners of the apartment 
were fowling-pieces, fishing-rods, and other sport- 
ing implements. The furniture was of the cum- 
brous workmanship of former days, though some 
articles of modern convenience had been added, 
and the oaken floor had been carpeted ; so that 
the whole presented an odd mixture of parlor and 
hall. 

The grate had been removed from the wide 
overwhelming fire-place, to make way for a fire of 
wood, in the midst of which was an enormous log, 
glowing and blazing, and sending forth a vast vol- 
ume of light and heat ; this I understood was the 
yule clog, which the 'Squire was particular in 
having brought in and illumined on a Christmas 
eve, according to ancient custom. ^ 

iThe yule clog is a great log of wood, sometimes the root of a 
tree, brought into the house with great ceremony, on Christmas 
eve, laid in the fire-place, and lighted with the brand of last year's 
clog. While it lasted, there were great drinking, singing, and tell- 
ing of tales. Sometimes it was accompanied by Christmas caudles ; 



28 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

It was really delightful to see the old 'Squire, 
seated in his hereditary elbow-chair, by the hospi- 
table fireside of his ancestors, and looking around 
him like the sun of a system, beaming warmth and 
gladness to every heart. Even the very dog that 
lay stretched at his feet, as he lazily shifted his 
position and yawned, would look fondly up in his 
master's face, wag his tail against the floor, and 
stretch himself again to sleep, confident of kind- 
ness and protection. There is an emanation from 
the heart in genuine hospitality, which cannot be 
described, but is immediately felt, and puts the 
stranger at once at his ease. I had not been 
seated many minutes by the comfortable hearth of 
the worthy old cavalier, before I found myself as 
much at home as if I had been one of the family. 

Supper was announced shortly after our arrival. 

but in the cottages, the only light was from the ruddy blaze of the 
great wood fire. The yule clog was to burn all night ; if it went 
out, it was considered a sign of ill luck. 

Herrick mentions it in one of his songs : — 

Come bring with a noise, 
My merrie, merrie boys. 
The Christmas log to the firing ; 
While my good dame she 
Bids ye all be free. 
And drink to your hearts desiring. 
The yule clog is still burnt in many farm-houses and kitchens in 
England, particularly in the north ; and there are several supersti- 
tions connected with it among the peasantry. If a squinting person 
come to the house while it is burning, or a person barefooted, it is 
considered an ill omen . The brand remaining from the yule clog is 
carefully put away to light the next year's Christmas fire. 

Irving's Note. 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 29 

It was served up in a spacious oaken chamber, the 
panels of which shone with wax, and around which 
were several family portraits decorated with holly 
and ivy. Beside the accustomed lights, two great 
wax tapers, called Christmas candles, wreathed 
with greens, were placed on a highly polished 
beaufet among the family plate. The table was 
abundantly spread \Yith substantial fare ; but the 
'Squire made his supper of frumenty, a dish made 
of wheat cakes boiled in milk with rich spices, be- 
ing a standing dish in old times for Christmas eve. 
I was happy to find my old friend, mince-pie, in 
the retinue of the feast ; and finding him to be 
perfectly orthodox, and that I need not be ashamed 
of my predilection, I greeted him with all the 
warmth wherewith we usually greet an old and 
very genteel acquaintance. 

The mirth of the company was greatly promoted 
by the humors of an eccentric personage whom 
Mr. Bracebridge always addressed with the quaint 
appellation of Master Simon. He was a tight, 
brisk little man, with an air of an arrant old 
bachelor. His nose was shaped like the bill of a 
parrot ; his face slightly pitted with the small-pox, 
with a dry perpetual bloom on it, like a frost-bitten 
leaf in autumn. He had an eye of great quick- 
ness and vivacity, with a drollery and lurking 
waggery of expression that was irresistible. He 
was evidently the wit of the family, dealing very 
much in sly jokes and innuendoes with the ladies, 



30 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

and making infinite merriment by harping upon 
old themes ; which, unfortunately, my ignorance 
of the family chronicles did not permit me to en- 
joy. It seemed to be his great delight, during 
supper, to keep a young girl next him in a con- 
tinual agony of stifled laughter, in spite of her awe 
of the reproving looks of her mother, who sat 
opposite. Indeed he was the idol of the younger 
part of the company, who laughed at everything 
he said or did, and at every turn of his countenance. 
I could not wonder at it ; for he must have been 
a miracle of accomplishments in their eyes. He 
could imitate Punch and Judy ; make an old 
woman of his hand, with the assistance of a burnt 
cork and pocket-handkerchief ; and cut an orange 
into such a ludicrous caricature, that the young 
folks were ready to die with laughing. 

I was let briefly into his history by Frank 
Bracebridge. He was an old bachelor, of a small 
independent income, which, by careful manage- 
ment, Avas sufficient for all his wants. He revolved 
through the family system like a vagrant comet 
in its orbit, sometimes visiting one branch, and 
sometimes another quite remote, as is often the 
case with gentlemen of extensive connections and 
small fortunes in England. He had a chirping, 
buoj^ant disposition, always enjoying the present 
moment ; and his frequent change of scene and 
company prevented his acquiring those rusty, un- 
accommodating habits, with which old bachelors 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 31 

are so uncharitably charged. He was a com- 
plete family chronicle, being versed in the gene- 
alogy, history, and intermarriages of the whole 
house of Bracebridge, which made him a great 
favorite with the old folks ; he was a beau of all 
the elder ladies and superannuated spinsters, 
among whom he was habitually considered rather 
a young fellow, and he was master of the revels 
among the children ; so that there was not a more 
popular being in the sphere in which he moved, than 
Mr. Simon Bracebridge. Of late years, he had 
resided almost entirely with the 'Squire, to whom 
he had become a factotum, and whom he particu- 
larly delighted by jumping w4th his humor in 
respect to old times, and by having a scrap of an 
old song to suit every occasion. We had presently 
a specimen of his last-mentioned talent ; for no 
sooner was supper removed, and spiced wines and 
other beverages peculiar to the season introduced, 
than Master Simon was called on for a good old 
Christmas song. He bethought himself for a mo- 
ment, and then, with a sparkle of the eye, and a 
voice that was by no means bad, excepting that it 
ran occasionally into a falsetto, like the notes of a 
split reed, he wavered forth a quaint old ditty : — 

Now Christmas is come, 

Let us beat up the drum, 
And call all our neighbors together : 

And when they^ appear, 

Let us make such a cheer, 
As will keep out the wind and the weather, etc. 



32 HAWTHOBNE CLASSICS 

The supper had disposed every one to gayety, 
and an old harper was summoned from the serv- 
ants' hall, where he had been strumming all the 
evening, and to all appearance comforting him- 
self with some of the 'Squire's liome-brewed. He 
was a kind of hanger-on, I was told, of the 
establishment, and though ostensibly a resident 
of the village, was oftener to be found in the 
'Squire's kitchen than his own home ; the old 
gentleman being fond of the sound of " harp in 
hall." 

The dance, like most dances after supper, was a 
merry one : some of the older folks joined in it, 
and the 'Squire himself figured down several couple 
with a partner with whom he afRrmed that he had 
danced at every Christmas for nearly half a cen- 
tury. Master Simon, who seemed to be a kind 
of connecting link between the old times and the 
new, and to be withal a little antiquated in the 
taste of his accomplishments, evidently piqued 
himself on his dancing, and was endeavoring to 
gain credit by the heel and toe, rigadoon, and 
other graces of the ancient school : but he had 
unluckily assorted himself with a little romping 
girl from boarding-school, who, by her wild viva- 
city, kept him continually on the stretch, and 
defeated all his sober attempts at elegance : — 
such are the ill-sorted matches to Avhich antique 
gentlemen are unfortunately prone ! 

The young Oxonian, on the contrary, had led out 



AMEBIC AN ESSAYS 33 

one of his maiden aunts, on whom the rogue played 
a thousand little knaveries with impunity ; he was 
full of practical jokes, and his delight was to tease 
his aunts and cousins ; yet, like all madcap young- 
sters, he was a universal favorite among the women. 
The most interesting couple in the dance was the 
young officer, and a ward of the 'Squire's, a beau- 
tiful blushing girl of seventeen. From several 
shy glances which I had noticed in the course of 
the evening, I suspected there was a little kind- 
ness growing up between them ; and, indeed, the 
young soldier was just the hero to captivate a 
romantic girl. He was tall, slender, and hand- 
some ; and, like most young British officers of late 
years, had picked up various small accomplish- 
ments on the continent; — he could talk French and 
Italian — draAv landscapes — sing very tolerably 
— dance divinely ; but, above all, he had been 
wounded at Waterloo ; — what girl of seventeen, 
well read in poetry and romance, could resist such 
a mirror of chivalry and perfection ? 

The moment the dance was over, he caught up 
a guitar, and lolling against the old marble fire- 
place, in an attitude which I am half inclined to 
suspect was studied, began the little French air 
of the Troubadour. The 'Squire, however, ex- 
claimed against having anything on Christmas 
eve but good old English ; upon which the young 
minstrel, casting up his eye for a moment, as if 
in an effort of memory, struck into another strain, 



34 UAWTHOBNE CLASSICS 

and with a charming air of gallantry, gave Her- 
rick's '' Night-Piece to Julia " : ^ — 

Her eyes the glow-worm lend thee, 
The shooting stars attend thee, 

And the elves also, 

Whose little eyes glow 
Like the sparks of fire, befriend thee. 

No Will-o'-th'-Wisp mislight thee ; 
Nor snake or slow- worm bite thee ; 

But on, on thy way. 

Not making a stay. 
Since ghost there is none to affright thee. 

Then let not the dark thee cumber ; 
What though the moon does slumber, . 

The stars of the night 

Will lend thee their light. 
Like tapers clear without number. 

Then, Julia, let me woo thee. 
Thus, thus to come unto me : 

And when I shall meet 

Thy silvery feet, 
My soul I'll pour into thee. 

The song might or might not have been intended 
in compliment to the fair Julia, for so I found his 
partner was called; she, however, was certainly 
unconscious of any such application; for she 
never looked at the singer, but kept her eyes 
cast upon the floor ; her face was suffused, it is 

1 When Irving wrote, the poems of Herrick were less well known 
than now. But this is one of the most charming, and we need not 
grudge it space even if we know it well, nor its fellows, indeed, in 
the following pages. 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 35 

true, with a beautiful blush, and there was a 
gentle heaving of the bosom, but all that was 
doubtless caused by the exercise of the dance : 
indeed, so great was her indifference, that she 
was amusing herself with plucking to pieces a 
choice bouquet of hot-house flowers, and by the 
time the song was concluded the nosegay lay in 
ruins on the floor. 

The party now broke up for the night with the 
kind-hearted old custom of shaking hands. As 
I passed through the hall on my way to my 
chamber, the dying embers of the yule clog still 
sent forth a dusky glow ; and had it not been 
the season when '^ no spirit dares stir abroad," 
I should have been half tempted to steal from 
my room at midnight, and peep whether the 
fairies might not be at their revels about the 
hearth. 

My chamber was in the old part of the man- 
sion, the ponderous furniture of which might 
have been fabricated in the days of the giants. 
The room was paneled, with cornices of heavy 
carved work, in which flowers and grotesque 
faces were strangely intermingled, and a row of 
black-looking portraits stared mournfully at me 
from the walls. The bed was of rich, though 
faded damask, with a lofty tester, and stood in 
a niche opposite a bow-window. I had scarcely 
got into bed when a strain of music seemed to 
break forth in the air just below the window ; 



36 HAWTHOBNE CLASSICS 

I listened, and found it proceeded from a band, 
which I concluded to be the waits from some 
neighboring village. They went round the house, 
plajdng under the windows. I drew aside the 
curtains, to hear them more distinctly. The 
moonbeams fell through the upper part of the 
casement, partially lighting up the antiquated 
apartment. The sounds, as they receded, became 
more soft and aerial, and seemed to accord with 
quiet and moonlight. I listened and listened — 
they became more and more tender and remote, 
and, as they gradually died away, my head sunk 
upon the pillow, and I fell asleep. 



CHRISTMAS DAY : 

Dark and dull night flie hence away, 
And give the honor to this day 
That sees December turned to May. 

******* 

Why does the chilling winter's morne 
Smile like a field beset with corn ? 
Or smell like to a meade new-shorne, 
Thus on a sudden ? — come and see 
The cause, why things thus fragrant be. 

Herrick. 

When I woke the. next morning, it seemed as 
if all the events of the preceding evening had 
been a dream, and nothing but the identity of 
the ancient chamber convinced me of their real- 
ity. While I lay musing on my pillow, I heard 



AMEBIC AN ESSAYS 37 

the sound of little feet pattering outside of the 
door, and a whispering consultation. Presently 
a choir of small voices chanted forth an old 
Christmas carol, the burden of which was — 

Rejoice, our Saviour he was born 
On Christmas day in the morning. 

I rose softly, slipped on my clothes, opened the 
door suddenly, and beheld one of the most beau- 
tiful little fairy groups that a painter could imag- 
ine. It consisted of a boy and two girls, the 
eldest not more than six, and lovely as seraphs. 
They were going the rounds of the house, sing- 
ing at every chamber door, but my sudden appear- 
ance frightened them into mute bashful ness. They 
remained foi* a moment playing on their lips with 
their fingers, and now and then stealing a shy 
glance from under their eyebrows, until, as if by 
one impulse, they scampered away, and as they 
turned an angle of the gallery, I heard them 
laughing in triumph at their escape. 

Everything conspired to produce kind and 
happy feelings, in this stronghold of old-fash- 
ioned hospitality. The window of my chamber 
looked out upon what in summer would have 
been a beautiful landscape. There was a slop- 
ing lawn, a line stream winding at the foot of it, 
and a tract of park beyond, with noble clumps 
of trees, and herds of de^r. At a distance was 
a neat liamlet, with the smoke from the cottage 
chimneys hanging over it ; and a church, with its 



38 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

dark spire in strong relief against the clear cold 
sky. The house was surrounded with evergreens, 
according to the English custom, which would have 
given almost an appearance of summer; but the 
morning was extremely frosty ; the light vapor 
of the preceding evening had been precipitated 
by the cold, and covered all the trees and every 
blade of grass with its fine crystallizations. The 
rays of a bright morning sun had a dazzling effect 
among the glittering foliage. A robin perched 
upon the top of a mountain ash, that hung its 
clusters of red berries just before my window, 
was basking himself in the sunshine, and piping 
a few querulous notes ; and a peacock was dis- 
playing all the glories of his train, and strutting 
with the pride and gravity of a Spanish grandee 
on the terrace-walk below. 

I had scarcely dressed myself, when a servant 
appeared to invite me to family prayers. He 
showed me the way to a small chapel in the old 
wing of the house, where I found the principal 
part of the family already assembled in a kind 
of gallery, furnished with cushions, hassocks, and 
large prayer-books; the servants were seated on 
benches below. The old gentleman read prayers 
from a desk in front of the gallery, and Master 
Simon acted as clerk and made the responses ; 
and I must do him the justice to say, that he 
acquitted himself with great gravity and decorum. 

The service was followed by a Christmas carol, 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 39 

which Mr. Bracebridge himself had constructed 
from a poem of his favorite author, Herrick ; and 
it had been adapted to a church melody by Master 
Simon. As there were several good voices among 
the household, the effect was extremely pleasing ; 
but I was particularly gratified by the exaltation 
of heart, and sudden sally of grateful feeling, with 
which the worthy 'Squire delivered one stanza; 
his eye glistening, and his voice rambling out of 
all the bounds of time and tune : — 

" 'Tis thou that crown' st my glittering hearth 

With guiltless mirth, 
And giv'st me Wassaile bowles to drink 

Spiced to the brink : 
Lord, 'tis thy plenty-dropping hand 

That soiles my land : 
And giv'st me for my bushell sowne, 

Twice ten for one." 

I afterwards understood that early morning ser- 
vice was read on every Sunday and saint's day 
throughout the year, either by Mr. Bracebridge or 
some member of the family. It was once almost 
universally the case at the seats of the nobility 
and gentry of England, and it is much to be re- 
gretted that the custom is falling into neglect; for 
the dullest observer must be sensible of the order 
and serenity prevalent in those households, where 
the occasional exercise of a beautiful form of wor- 
ship in the morning gives, as it were, the key-note 
to every temper for the day, and attunes every 
spirit to harmony. 



40 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

Our breakfast consisted of what the 'Squire 
denominated true okl English fare. He indulged 
in some bitter lamentations over modern breakfasts 
of tea and toast, which he censured as among the 
causes of modern effeminacy and weak nerves, 
and the decline of old English heartiness : and 
though he admitted them to his table to suit the 
palates of his guests, yet there was a brave display 
of cold meats, wine, and ale, on the sideboard. 

After breakfast, I walked about the grounds 
with Frank Bracebridge and Master Simon, or 
Mr. Simon, as he was called by everybody but the 
'Squire. We were escorted by a number of gen- 
tlemanlike dogs, that seemed loungers about the 
establishment ; from the frisking spaniel to the 
steady old stag-hound— -the last of which was of 
a race that had been in the family time out of 
mind — they were all obedient to a dog-whistle 
which hung to Master Simon's button-hole, and in 
the midst of their gambols would glance an eye 
occasionally upon a small switch lie carried in his 
hand. 

The old mansion had a still more venerable look 
in the yellow sunshine than by pale moonlight ; 
and I could not but feel the force of the 'Squire's 
idea, that the formal terraces, heavily molded 
balustrades, and clipped yew trees, carried with 
them an air of proud aristocracy. 

There appeared to be an unusual number of 
peacocks about the place, and I was making some 



AMEBIC AN ESSAYS 41 

remarks upon what I termed a flock of them that 
were basking under a sunny wall, when I was 
gently corrected in my phraseology by Master 
Simon, who told me that according to the most 
ancient and approved treatise on hunting, I must 
say a muster of peacocks. '•' In the same way," 
added he, with a slight air of pedantry, " we say 
a flight of doves or swallows, a bevy of quails, a 
herd of deer, or wrens, or cranes, a skulk of foxes, 
or a building of rooks." He went on to inform 
me that, according to Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, 
we ought to ascribe to this bird ''both understand- 
ing and glory ; for, being praised, he will presently 
set up his tail, chiefly against the sun, to the intent 
you may the better behold the beauty thereof. 
But at the fall of the leaf, when his tail falleth, he 
will mourn and hide himself in corners, till his 
tail come again as it was." 

I could not help smiling at this display of small 
erudition on so whimsical a subject ; but I found 
that the peacocks were birds of some consequence 
at the Hall ; for Frank Bracebridge informed me 
that they were great favorites with his father, who 
was extremely careful to keep up the breed, partly 
because they belonged to chivalry, and were in 
great request at the stately banquets of the olden 
time ; and partly because they had a pomp and 
magnificence about them l^iighly becoming an old 
family mansion. Nothing, he was accustomed to 
say, had .an air of greater state and dignity, than 



42 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

a peacock perched upon an antique stone balus- 
trade. 

Master Simon had now to hurry off, having an 
appointment at the parish church with the village 
choristers, who were to perform some music of his 
selection. There was something extremely agree- 
able in the cheerful flow of animal spirits of the 
little man ; and I confess that I had been some- 
what surprised at his apt quotations from authors 
who certainly were not in the range of everyday 
reading. I mentioned this last circumstance to 
Frank Bracebridge, who told me with a smile that 
Master Simon's whole stock of erudition was con- 
fined to isome half a dozen old authors, which the 
'Squire had put into his hands, and which he read 
over and over, whenever he had a studious fit ; 
as he sometimes had on a rainy day, or a long win- 
ter evening. Sir Anthonj^ Fitzherbert's Book of 
Husbandry ; Markham's Country Contentments ; 
the Tretyse of Hunting, by Sir Thomas Cockayne, 
Knight ; Isaac Walton's Angler, and two or three 
more such ancient worthies of the pen, were his 
standard authorities ; and, like all men who know 
but a few books, he looked up to them with a kind 
of idolatry, and quoted them on all occasions. 
As to his songs, they were chiefly picked out of 
old books in the 'Squire's library, and adapted to 
tunes that were popular among tlie choice spirits 
of the last century. His practical application of 
scraps of literature, however, had caused him to 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 43 

be looked upon as a prodigy of book-knowledge 
by all the grooms, huntsmen, and small sportsmen 
of the neighborhood. 

While we were talking, we heard the distant 
toll of the village bell, and I was told that the 
'Squire was a little particular in having his house- 
hold at church on a Christmas morning ; con- 
sidering it a day of pouring out of thanks and 
rejoicing ; for, as old Tusser observed, — 

"At Christmas be merry, and thankful withal^ 
And feast thy good neighbors, the great with the small." 

''If you are disposed to go to church," said 
Frank Bracebridge, '' I can promise you a speci- 
men of my cousin Simon's musical achievements. 
As the church is destitute of an organ, he has 
formed a band from the village amateurs, and 
established a musical club for their improvement ; 
he has also sorted a choir, as he sorted my father's 
pack of hounds, according to the directions of 
Jervaise Markham, in his Country Contentments ; 
for the bass he has sought out all the ' deep, sol- 
emn mouths,' and for the tenor the ' loud ringing 
mouths,' among the country bumpkins ; and for 
'sweet mouths,' he has culled with curious taste 
among the prettiest lassies in the neighborhood ; 
though these last, he affirms, are the most difficult 
to keep in tune ; your pretty female singer being 
exceedingly wayward and capricious, and very 
liable to accident." 

As the morning, though frosty, was remarkably 



44 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

fine and clear, the most of the family walked to 
the church, which was a very old building of gray 
stone, and stood near a village, about half a mile 
from the park gate. Adjoining it was a low snug 
parsonage, which seemed coeval with the church. 
The front of it was perfectly matted with a yew 
tree that had been trained against its walls, 
through the dense foliage of which, apertures had 
been formed to admit light into the small antique 
lattices. As we passed this sheltered nest, the 
parson issued forth and preceded us. 

I had expected to see a sleek well-conditioned 
pastor, such as is often found in a snug living in 
the vicinity of a rich patron's table, but I was 
disappointed. The parson Avas a -little meagre, 
black-looking man, with a grizzled wig that was 
too wide, and stood off from each ear ; so that his 
head seemed to have shrunk away within it, like 
a dried filbert in its shell. He wore a rusty coat, 
with great skirts, and pockets that would have 
held the church Bible and prayer-book : and his 
small legs seemed still smaller, from being planted 
in large shoes, decorated with enormous buckles. 

I was informed by Frank Bracebridge that the 
parson had been a chum of his father's at Oxford, 
and had received this living shortly after the 
latter had come to his estate. He was a complete 
black-letter hunter, and would scarcelj^ read a 
work printed in the Roman character. The edi- 
tions of Caxton and Wynkin de Worde were his 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 45 

delight ; and he was indefatigable in his researches 
after such old English writers as have fallen into 
oblivion from their worthlessness. In deference, 
perhaps, to the notions of Mr. Bracebridge, he had 
made diligent investigations into the festive rites 
and holiday customs of former times ; and had 
been as zealous in the inquiry, as if he had been 
a boon companion ; but it was merely with that 
plodding spirit with which men of adust tempera- 
ment follow up any track of study, merely because 
it is denominated learning ; indifferent to its 
intrinsic nature, whether it be the illustration of 
the wisdom, or of the ribaldry and obscenity of 
antiquity. He had pored over these old volumes 
so intensely, that they seemed to have been reflected 
into his countenance ; which, if the face be indeed 
an index of the mind, might be compared ta a 
title-page of black-letter. 

On reaching the church-porch, we found the par- 
son rebuking the gray-headed sexton for having used 
mistletoe among the greens with which the church 
was decorated. It was, he observed, an unholy 
plant, profaned by having been used by the Druids 
in their mystic ceremonies ; and though it might 
be innocently employed in the festive ornament- 
ing of halls and kitchens, yet it had been deemed 
by the Fathers of the Church as unhallowed, and 
totally unfit for sacred purposes. So tenacious 
was he on this point, that the poor sexton was 
obliged to strip down a great part of the humble 



46 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

trophies of his taste, before the parson would con- 
sent to enter upon the service of the day. 

The interior of the church was venerable, but 
simple ; on the walls were several mural monuments 
of the Bracebridges, and just beside the altar, was 
a tomb of ancient workmanship, on which lay the 
effigy of a warrior in armor, with his legs crossed, 
a sign of his having been a crusader. I was told 
it was one of the family who had signalized him- 
self in the Holy Land, and the same whose picture 
hung over the fire-place in the hall. 

During service. Master Simon stood up in the 
pew, and repeated the responses very audibly; 
evincing that kind of ceremonious devotion punc- 
tually observed by a gentleman of the old school, 
and a man of old family connections. I observed, 
too, that he turned over the leaves of a folio prayer- 
book with something of a flourish, possibly to show 
off an enormous seal-ring which enriched one of 
his fingers, and which had the look of a family 
relic. But he was evidently most solicitous about 
the musical part of the service, keeping his eye 
fixed intently on the choir, and beating time with 
much gesticulation and emphasis. 

The orchestra was in a small gallery, and pre- 
sented a most whimsical grouping of heads, piled 
one above the other, among which I particularly 
noticed that of the village tailor, a pale fellow 
with a retreating forehead and chin, who played 
on the clarionet, and seemed to have blown his 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 47 

face to a point ; and there was another, a short, 
pursy man, stooping and laboring at a bass viol, 
so as to show nothing but the top of a round bald 
head, like the egg of an ostrich. There were two 
or three pretty faces among the female singers, to 
which the keen air of a frosty morning had given 
a bright rosy tint : but the gentlemen choristers had 
evidently been chosen, like old Cremona fiddles, 
more for tone than looks ; and as several had to 
sing from the same book, there were clusterings 
of odd physiognomies, not unlike those groups of 
cherubs we sometimes see on country tombstones. 
The usual services of the choir were managed 
tolerably well, the vocal parts generally lagging a 
little behind the instrumental, and some loitering 
fiddler now and then making up for lost time by 
traveling over a passage with prodigious celerity, 
and clearing more bars than the keenest fox- 
hunter, to be in at the death. But the great trial 
was an anthem that had been prepared and arranged 
by Master Simon, and on which he had founded 
great expectation. Unluckily there was a blunder 
at the very outset — the musicians became flur- 
ried ; Master Simon was in a fever ; everything 
went on lamely and irregularly, until they came to 
a chorus beginning, '^Now let us sing with one 
accord," which seemed to be a signal for parting 
company : all became discord and confusion ; each 
shifted for himself, and got to the end as well, or, 
rather, as soon as he could ; excepting one old 



48 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

chorister, in a pair of horn spectacles bestriding 
and pinching a long sonorous nose ; who, happen- 
ing to stand a little apart, and being wrapped up 
in his own melodj^, kept on a quavering course, 
wriggling his head, ogling his book, and wind- 
ing all up by a nasal solo of at least three bars' 
duration. 

The parson gave us a most erudite sermon on 
the rites and ceremonies of Cliristmas, and the 
propriety of observing it, not merely as a day of 
thanksgiving, but of rejoicing ; supporting the 
correctness of his opinions by the earliest usages 
of the church, and enforcing them by the author- 
ities of Theophilus of Cesarea, St. Cyprian, St. 
Chrysostom, St. Augustine, and a cloud more of 
Saints and Fathers, from whom he made copious 
quotations. I was a little at a loss to perceive 
the necessity of such a mighty array of forces to 
maintain a point which no one present seemed 
inclined to dispute ; but I soon found that the 
good man had a legion of ideal adversaries to con- 
tend with ; having, in the course of his researches 
on the subject of Christmas, got completely em- 
broiled in the sectarian controversies of the Revo- 
lution, when the Puritans made such a fierce assault 
upon the ceremonies of the church, and poor old 
Christmas was driven out of the land by proclama- 
tion of Parliament.^ The worthy parson lived 

1 From the " Flying Eagle," a small Gazette, published Decem- 
ber 24th, 1652 — "The House speut much time this day about the 



AMEBIC AN ESSAYS 49 

but with times past, and knew but little of the 
present. 

Shut up among worm-eaten tomes in tlie retire- 
ment of his antiquated little study, the pages of 
old times were to him as the gazettes of the day ; 
while the era of the Revolution was mere modern 
history. He forgot that nearly two centuries had 
elapsed since the fiery persecution of poor mince- 
pie throughout the land ; when plum porridge 
was denounced as '' mere popery," and roast beef 
as anti-christian ; and that Christmas had been 
brought in again triumphantly with the merry 
court of King Charles at the Restoration. He 
kindled into warmth with the ardor of his contest, 
and the host of imaginary foes with whom he had 
to combat ; he had a stubborn conflict with old 
Prynne and two or three other forgotten cham- 
pions of the Round Heads, on the subject of 
Christmas festivity ; and concluded by urging 
his hearers, in the most solemn and affecting man- 
ner, to stand to the traditional customs of their 



business of the Navy, for settling the affairs at sea, and before they 
rose, were presented with a terrible remonstrance against Christ- 
mas day, grounded upon divine Scriptures, 2 Cor. v. 16., 1 Cor. xv. 
14, 17; and in honour of the Lord's Day, grounded upon these 
Scriptures, John xx. 1., Rev. i. 10., Psalms, cxviii. 24., Lev. xx. iii. 7, 
11., Mark, xv. 8., Psalms, Ixxxiv. 10 ; in which Christmas is called 
Anti-christ's masse, and those Masse-mongers and Papists who 
observe it, &c. In consequence of which Parliament spent some 
time in consultation about the abolition of Christmas day, passed 
orders to that effect, and resolved to sit on the following day which 
was commonly called Christmas day." — Irving's Note. 

E 



50 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

fathers, and feast and make merry on this joyful 
anniversary of the church. 

I have seldom known a sermon attended appar- 
ently with more immediate effects ; for on leaving 
the church, the congregation seemed one and all 
possessed with the gayety of spirit so earnestly 
enjoined by their pastor. The elder folks gath- 
ered in knots in the churchyard, greeting and 
shaking hands ; and the children ran about cry- 
ing, "- Ule ! Ule ! " and repeating some uncouth 
rhymes,^ which the parson, who had joined us, 
informed me, had been handed down from days of 
yore. The villagers doffed their hats to the 'Squire 
as he passed, giving him tlie good wishes of the 
season with every appearance of heartfelt sincerity, 
and were invited by him to the hall, to take some- 
thing to keep out the cold of the weather ; and I 
heard blessings uttered by several of the poor, 
which convinced me that, in the midst of his 
enjoyments, the worthy old cavalier had not for- 
gotten the true Christmas virtue of charity. 

On our way homeward, his heart seemed over- 
flowing with generous and happy feelings. As we 
passed over a rising ground which commanded 
something of a prospect, the sounds of rustic 
merriment now and then reached our ears ; the 
^Squire paused for a few moments, and looked 

i^'Ule ! Ule ! 

Three puddings in a pule ; 
Crack nuts and cry ule ! " 



AMEBIC AN ESSAYS 51 

around with an air of inexpressible benignity. 
The beauty of the day was, of itself, sufficient to 
inspire philanthropy. Notwithstanding the frosti- 
ness of the morning, the sun in his cloudless 
journey had acquired sufficient power to melt 
away the thin covering of snow from every south- 
ern declivity, and to bring out the living green 
which adorns an English landscape even in mid- 
winter. Large tracts of smiling verdure, con- 
trasted with the dazzling whiteness of the shaded 
slopes and hollows. Every sheltered bank, on 
which the broad rays rested, yielded its silver 
rill of cold and limpid water, glittering through 
the dripping grass ; and sent up slight exhalations 
to contribute to the thin haze that hung just above 
the surface of the earth. There was something 
truly cheering in this triumph of warmth and 
verdure over the frosty thralldom of winter ; it 
was, as the Squire observed, an emblem of Christ- 
mas hospitality, breaking through the chills of 
ceremony and selfishness, and thawing every heart 
into a flow. He pointed with pleasure to the 
indications of good cheer reeking from the chim- 
neys of the comfortable farm-houses, and low 
thatched cottages. '^ I love," said he, ^' to see 
this day well kept by rich and poor ; it is a great 
thing to have one day in the year, at least, when 
you are sure of being \)relcome wherever you go, 
and of having, as it were, the world all thrown 
open to you ; and I am almost disposed to join 



52 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

with poor Robin, in his malediction on every 
churlish enemy to this honest festival : — 

" ' Those who at Christmas do repine, 

And would fain hence dispatch him, 
May they with old duke Humphry dine, 
Or else may 'Squire Ketch catch 'em.' " 

The 'Squire went on to lament the deplorable 
decay of the games and amusements which were 
once prevalent at this season among the lower 
orders, and countenanced by the higher ; when 
the old halls of castles and manor-houses were 
thrown open at day-light ; when the tables were 
covered with brawn, and beef, and humming ale ; 
when the harp and the carol resounded all day 
long, and Avhen rich and poor were alike welcome 
to enter and make merry.^ " Our old games and 
local customs," said he, '4iad a great effect in 
making the peasant fond of his home, and the 
promotion of them by the gentry made him fond 
of his lord. They made the times merrier, and 
kinder, and better, and I can truly say with one 
of our old poets : — 

1 '' An Eno-lish gentleman at the opening of the great day, i.e. on 
Christmas day in the morning, had all his tenants and neighbors 
enter his hall by day-break. The strong beer was broached, and 
the black jacks went plentifully about with toast, sugar, and nut- 
meg and good Cheshire cheese. The Hackin (the great sausage) 
must be boiled by day-break, or else two young men must take the 
maiden {i.e. the cook) by the arms and run her round the market 
place till she is shamed of her laziness." — Round about our Sea- 
Coal Fire ; Irving' s Note. 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 53 

'* I like them well — the curious preciseness 
And all-pretended gravity of those 
That seek to banish hence these harmless sports, 
Have thrust away much ancient honesty." 

" The nation," continned he, '' is altered ; we 
have ahnost lost our simple true-hearted peasantry. 
They have broken asunder from the higher classes, 
and seem to think their interests are separate. 
They have become too knowing, and begin to read 
newspapers, listen to alehouse politicians, and talk 
of reform. I think one mode to keep them in 
good humor in these hard times, would be for the 
nobility and gentry to pass more time on their 
estates, mingle more among the country people, 
and set the merry old English games going again." 

Such was the good 'Squire's project for mitigat- 
ing public discontent : and, indeed, he had once 
attempted to put his doctrine in practice, and a 
few years before had kept open house during the 
holidays in the old style. The country people, 
however, did not understand how to play their 
parts in the scene of hospitality ; many uncouth 
circumstances occurred ; the manor was overrun 
by all the vagrants of the country, and more 
beggars drawn into the neighborhood in one week 
than the parish officers could get rid of in a year. 
Since then, he had contented himself with inviting 
the decent part of the neighboring peasantry to 
call at the Hall on Christmas day, and with dis- 
tributing beef, and bread, and ale, among the 



54 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

poor, that thej^ might make merry in their own 
dwellings. 

We had not been long home, when the sound of 
music was heard from a distance. A band of 
country lads, without coats, their shirt-sleeves 
fancifully tied with ribbons, their hats decorated 
with greens, and clubs in their hands, were seen 
advancing up the avenue, followed by a large 
number of villagers and peasantry. They stopped 
before the hall door, where the music struck up a 
peculiar air, and the lads performed a curious and 
intricate dance, advancing, retreating, and striking 
their clubs together, keeping exact time to the 
music ; while one, whimsically crowned with a 
fox's skin, the tail of which flaunted down his 
back, kept capering round the skirts of the dance, 
and rattling a Christmas-box with many antic 
gesticulations. 

The 'Squire eyed this fanciful exhibition with 
great interest and delight, and gave me a full 
account of its origin, which he traced to the times 
when the Romans held possession of the island ; 
plainly proving that this was a lineal descendant 
of the sword-dance of the ancients. " It was 
now," he said, *' nearly extinct, but he had acci- 
dentally met with traces of it in the neighborhood, 
and had encouraged its revival ; though, to tell 
the truth, it was too apt to be followed up by 
rough cudgel-play, and broken heads, in the 
evening." 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 65 

After the dance was concluded, the whole party- 
was entertained with brawn and beef, and stout 
home-brewed. The 'Squire himself mingled 
among the rustics, and was received with awk- 
ward demonstrations of deference and regard. It 
is true, I perceived two or three of the younger 
peasants, as they were raising their tankards to 
their mouths, when the 'Squire's back was turned, 
making something of a grimace, and giving each 
other the wink ; but the moment they caught my 
eye they pulled grave faces, and were exceedingly 
demure. With Master Simon, however, they all 
seemed more at their ease. His varied occupa- 
tions and amusements had made him well known 
throughout the neighborhood. He was a visitor 
at every farm-house and cottage ; gossiped with 
the farmers and their wives ; romped with their 
daughters ; and, like that type of a vagrant 
bachelor the humble-bee, tolled the sweets from 
all the rosy lips of the country round. 

The bashfulness of the guests soon gave way 
before good cheer and affability. There is some- 
thing genuine and affectionate in the gayety of 
the lower orders, when it is excited by the bounty 
and familiarity of those above them ; the warm 
glow of gratitude enters into their mirth, and a 
kind word or a small pleasantry frankly uttered 
by a patron, gladdens the heart of the dependant 
more than oil and wine.^ When the 'Squire had 
retired, the merriment increased, and there was 



66 HAWTHOUNE CLASSICS 

much joking and laughter, particularly between 
Master Simon and a hale, ruddy-faced, white- 
headed farmer, who appeared to be the wit of the 
village ; for I observed all his companions to wait 
with open mouths for his retorts, and burst into a 
gratuitous laugh before they could well under- 
stand them. 

The whole house, indeed, seemed abandoned to 
merriment ; as I passed to my room to dress for 
dinner, I heard the sound of music in a small 
court, and looking through a window that com- 
manded it, I perceived a band of wandering 
musicians, with pandean pipes, and tambourine ; 
a pretty coquettish housemaid was dancing a jig 
with a smart country lad, while several of the 
other servants were looking on. In the midst of 
her sport, the girl caught a glimpse of ray face at 
the window, and coloring up, ran off with an air 
of roguish affected confusion. 



AMEBIC AN ESSAYS 57 



THE CHRISTMAS DINNER 

Lo, now is come our joyful'st feast ! 

Let every man be jolly, 
Each roome with yvie leaves is dressed, 
And every post with holly. 
Now all our neighbors' chimneys smoke, 
And Christmas blocks are burning ; 

Their ovens they with baked meats choke, 
And all their spits are turning, 
Without the door let sorrow lie 
And if, for cold, it hap to die. 
We'll bury 't in a Christmas pye. 
And evermore be merry. 

Wither, Juvenilia. 

I HAD finished my toilet, and was loitering with 
Frank Bracebridge in the library, when we heard 
a distant thwacking sound, which he informed me 
was a signal for the serving up of the dinner. 
The 'Squire kept up old customs in kitchen as 
well as hall ; and the rolling-pin struck upon the 
dresser by the cook, summoned the servants to 
carry in the meats. 

Just in this nick the cook knocked thrice, 
And all the waiters in a trice, 

His summons did obey ; 
Each serving man, with dish in hand. 
Marched boldly up, like our train band, 

Presented, and away.^ 

The dinner was served up in the great hall, 
where the 'Squire always held his Christmas ban- 

1 Sir John Suckling : Ballad of a Wedding. 



58 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

quet. A blazing, crackling fire of logs had been 
heaped on to warm the spacious apartment, and 
the flame went sparkling and wreathing up the 
wide-mouthed chimney. The great picture of 
the crusader and his white horse had been pro- 
fusely decorated with greens for the occasion ; 
and holly and ivy had likewise been wreathed 
round the helmet and weapons on the opposite 
wall, which I understood were the arms of the 
same warrior. I must own, by the bye, I had 
strong doubts about the authenticity of the paint=- 
ing and armor as having belonged to the crusader, 
they certainly having the stamp of more recent 
days ; but I was told that the painting had been 
so considered time out of mind; and that, as to 
the armor, it had been found in a lumber-room, 
and elevated to its present situation by the 'Squire, 
who at once determined it to be the armor of the 
family hero ; and as he was absolute authority on 
all such subjects in his own household, the matter 
had passed into current acceptation. A sideboard 
was set out just under this chivalric trophy, on 
which was a display of plate that might have 
vied (at least in variety) with Belshazzar's parade 
of the vessels of the temple ; " flagons, cans, cups, 
beakers, goblets, basins, and ewers ; " the gorgeous 
utensils of good companionship that had gradually 
accumulated through many generations of jovial 
housekeepers. Before these stood the two yule 
candles, beaming like two stars of the first magni- 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 59 

tude ; other lights were distributed in branches, 
and the whole array glittered like a firmament of 
silver. 

We were ushered into this banqueting scene 
with the sound of minstrelsy ; the old harper being 
seated on a stool beside the fire-place, and twang- 
ing his instrument with a vast deal more power 
than melody. Never did Christmas board display 
a more goodly and gracious assemblage of counte- 
nances ; those who were not handsome, were, at 
least, happy ; and happiness is a rare improver of 
your hard-favored visage. I always consider an 
old English family as well worth studying as a 
collection of Holbein's portraits, or Albert Durer's 
prints. There is much antiquarian lore to be 
acquired ; much knowledge of the physiognomies 
of former times. Perhaps it may be from having 
continually before their eyes those rows of old 
family portraits, with which the mansions of this 
country are stocked ; certain it is, that the quaint 
features of antiquity are often most faithfully per- 
petuated in these ancient lines ; and I have traced 
an old family nose through a whole picture-gallery, 
legitimately handed down from generation to gen- 
eration, almost from the time of the Conquest. 
Something of the kind was to be observed in the 
worthy company around me. Many of their faces 
had evidently originated in a Gothic age, and been 
merely copied by succeeding generations; and 
there was one little girl, in particular, of staid 



60 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

demeanor, with a high Roman nose, and an an- 
tique vinegar aspect, who was a great favorite of 
the 'Squire's, being, as he said, a Bracebridge all 
over, and the very counterpart of one of his ances- 
tors who figured in the court of Henry VIII. 

The parson said grace, which was not a short 
familiar one, such as is commonly addressed to 
the Deity in these unceremonious days ; but a 
long, courtly, well-worded one of the ancient 
school. There was now a pause, as if something 
was expected ; when suddenly the butler entered 
the hall with some degree of bustle ; he was at- 
tended by a servant on each side with a large wax- 
light, and bore a silver dish, on which was an 
enormous pig's head, decorated with rosemary, 
with a lemon in its mouth, which was placed with 
great formality at the head of the table. The 
moment this pageant made its appearance, the 
harper struck up a flourish ; at the conclusion of 
which the young Oxonian, on receiving a hint 
from the 'Squire, gave, with an air of the most 
comic gravity, an old carol, the first verse of which 
was as follows : — 

Caput apri defer o 

Reddens laudes Domino. ^ 
The boar's head in hand bring I, 
With garlands gay and rosemary. 
I pray you all synge merily 

Qui estis in convivio.^ 

1 The boar's head I bring, giving praise to the Lord. 

2 Who are at this banquet. 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 61 

Though prepared to witness many of these little 
eccentricities, from being apprised of the peculiar 
hobby of mine host ; yet, I confess, the parade 
with which so odd a dish was introduced some- 
what perplexed me, until I gathered from the con- 
versation of the 'Squire and the parson, that it 
was meant to represent the bringing in of the 
boar's head, — a dish formerly served up with 
much ceremony, and the sound of minstrelsy and 
song, at great tables on Christmas day. " I like 
the old custom," said the 'Squire, "not merely 
because it is stately and pleasing in itself, but 
because it was observed at the college at Oxford, 
at which I was educated. When I hear the old 
song chanted, it brings to mind the time when I 
was young and gamesome — and the noble old 
college hall — and my fellow-students loitering 
about in their black gowns ; many of whom, poor 
lads, are now in their graves ! " 

The parson, however, whose mind was not 
haunted by such associations, and who was always 
more taken up with the text than the sentiment, 
objected to the Oxonian's version of the carol ; 
which he affirmed was different from that sung at 
college. He went on, with the dry perseverance 
of a commentator, to give the college reading, 
accompanied by sundry annotations ; addressing 
himself at first to the company at large ; but find- 
ing their attention gradually diverted to other 
talk, and other objects, he lowered his tone as his 



62 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

number of auditors diminished, until he concluded 
his remarks in an under voice, to a fat-headed old 
gentleman next him, who was silently engaged in 
the discussion of a huge plateful of turkey. 

The table was literally loaded with good cheer, 
and presented an epitome of country abundance, 
in this season of overflowing larders. A distin- 
guished post was allotted to " ancient sirloin," as 
mine host termed it; being, as he added, ''the 
standard of old English hospitality, and a joint of 
goodly presence and full of expectation." There 
were several dishes quaintly decorated, and which 
had evidently something traditional in their embel- 
lishments ; but about which, as I did not like to 
appear over-curious, I asked no questions. 

I could not, however, but notice a pie, magnifi- 
cently decorated with peacocks' feathers, in imita- 
tion of the tail of that bird, which overshadowed 
a considerable tract of the table. This, the 'Squire 
confessed, with some little hesitation, was a pheas- 
ant pie, though a peacock pie was certainly the 
most authentical ; but there had been such a mor- 
tality among the peacocks this season, that he 
could not prevail upon himself to have one killed. ^ 

1 The peacock was anciently in great demand for stately enter- 
tainments. Sometimes it was made into a pie, at one end of which 
the head appeared above the crust in all its plumage, with the beak 
richly gilt ; at the other end the tail was displayed. Such pies were 
served up at the solemn banquets of chivalry, when Knights-errant 
pledged themselves to undertake any perilous enterprise, whence 
came the ancient oath, used by Justice Shallow, " by cock and pie." 

The peacock was also an important dish for the Christmas feast ; 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 63 

It would be tedious, perhaps, to my wiser 
readers, who may not have that foolish fondness 
for odd and obsolete things to which I am a little 
given, were I to mention the other make-shifts of 
this worthy old humorist,^ by which he was en- 
deavoring to follow up, though at humble distance, 
the quaint customs of antiquity. I was pleased, 
however, to see the respect shown to his whims by 
his children and relatives ; who, indeed, entered 
readily into the full spirit of them, and seemed all 
well versed in their parts ; having doubtless been 
present at many a rehearsal. I was amused, too, 
at the air of profound gravity with which the 
butler and other servants executed the duties 
assigned them, however eccentric. They had an 
old-fashioned look ; having, for the most part, 
been brought up in the household, and grown into 
keeping with the antiquated mansion, and the 
humors of its lord ; and most probably looked 
upon all his whimsical regulations as the estab- 
lished laws of honorable housekeeping. 

When the cloth was removed, the butler 
brought in a huge silver vessel, of rare and 

and Massinger, in his City Madam, gives some idea of the extrava- 
gance with which this, as well as other dishes, was prepared for the 
gorgeous revels of the olden times : — 

Men may talk of Country Christmasses. 

Their thirty pound buttered eggs, their pies of carps' tongues ; 

Their pheasants drenched witli ambergris : the carcases of three 
fat wethers bruised for gravy to make sauce for a single peacock I 
— Irving's Note. 

' A man of humors or fancies. 



64 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

curious workmanship, which he placed before the 
'Squire. Its appearance was hailed with accla- 
mation ; being the Wassail Bowl, so renowned in 
Christmas festivity. The contents had been pre- 
pared by the 'Squire himself ; for it was a bever- 
age, in the skillful mixture of which he particularly 
prided himself ; alleging that it was too abstruse 
and complex for the comprehension of an ordinary 
servant. It was a potation, indeed, that might 
well make the heart of a toper leap within him ; 
being composed of the richest and raciest wines, 
highly spiced and sweetened, with roasted apples 
bobbing about the surface. ^ 

The old gentleman's whole countenance beamed 
with a serene look of indwelling delight, as he 
stirred this mighty bowl. Having raised it to his 
lips, with a hearty wish of a merry Christmas to 
all present, he sent it brimming round the board, 
for every one to follow his example according to 
the primitive style ; pronouncing it '' the ancient 

1 The Wassail Bowl was sometimes composed of ale instead of 
wine ; with nutmeg, sugar, toast, ginger, and roasted crabs ; in 
this way the nut-brown beverage is still prepared in some old fam- 
ilies, and round the hearth of substantial farmers at Christmas. It 
is also called Lamb's Wool, and it is celebrated by Herrick in his 
Twelfth Night : — 

Next crowne the bowle full 

With gentle Lamb's Wool, 
Add sugar, nutmeg, and ginger, 

With store of ale too 

And thus ye must doe 
To make the Wassaile a swinger. — Irving's Note. 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 65 

fountain of good feeling, where all hearts met 
together." ^ 

There was much laughing and rallying, as the 
honest emblem of Christmas joviality circulated, 
and was kissed rather coyly by the ladies. Bat 
when it reached Master Simon, he raised it in both 
hands, and with the air of a boon companion, 
struck up an old Wassail Chanson : — 

The brown bowle, 

The merry browne bowle, 

As it goes round about-a, 

Fill 

Still, 
Let the world say what it will, 
And drink your fill all out-a. 
The deep canne, 
The merry deep canne. 
As thou dost freely quaff-a 

Sing 

Fling, 
Be as merry as a king, 
And sound a lusty laugh -a.^ 

Much of the conversation during dinner turned 
upon family topics, to which I was a stranger. 
There was, however, a great deal of rallying of 
Master Simon about some gay widow, with whom 
he was accused of having a flirtation. This attack 

1 "The custom of drinking out of the same cup gave place to 
each having his cup. When the steward came to the doore with 
the Wassel, he was to cry three times, Wassel, Wassel, Wassel, and 
then the chappell (chaplain) was to answer with a song." —Archsd- 
ologia. — Irving. 

2 From Poor Robin's Ahiianack. — Irving. 



66 HAWTROBNE CLASSICS 

was commenced by the ladies ; but it was con- 
tinued throughout the dinner by the fat-headed 
old gentleman next the parson, with the persever- 
ing assiduity of a slow hound ; being one of these 
long-winded jokers, who, though rather dull at 
starting game, are unrivaled for their talents in 
hunting it down. At every pause in the general 
conversation, he renewed his bantering in pretty 
much the same terms ; winking hard at me with 
both eyes, whenever he gave Master Simon what 
he considered a home thrust. The latter, indeed, 
seemed fond of being teased on the subject, as old 
bachelors are apt to be ; and he took occasion to 
inform me, in an undertone, that the lady in ques- 
tion was a prodigiously fine woman and drove her 
own curricle. 

The dinner-time passed away in this flow of in- 
nocent hilarity, and though the old hall may have 
resounded in its time with many a scene of broader 
rout and revel, yet I doubt whether it ever wit- 
nessed more honest and genuine enjoyment. How 
easy it is for one benevolent being to diffuse pleas- 
ure around him ; and how truly is a kind heart a 
fountain of gladness, making everything in its 
vicinity to freshen into smiles ! The joyous dis- 
position of the worthy 'Squire was perfectly con- 
tagious ; he was happy himself, and disposed to 
make all the world happy ; and the little eccen- 
tricities of his humor did but season, in a manner, 
the sweetness of his philanthropy. 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 67 

When the ladies had retired, the conversation, 
as usual, became still more animated : many good 
things were broached which had been thought of 
during dinner, but which would not exactly do for 
a lady's ear ; and though I cannot positively affirm 
that there was much wit uttered, yet I have cer- 
tainly heard many contests of rare wit produce 
much less laughter. Wit, after all, is a mighty 
tart, pungent ingredient, and much too acid for 
some stomachs ; but honest good-humor is the oil 
and wine of a merry meeting, and there is no 
jovial companionship equal to that, where the 
jokes are rather small, and the laughter abundant. 

The 'Squire told several long stories of early 
college pranks and adventures, in some of which 
the parson had been a sharer ; though in looking 
at the latter, it required some effort of imagination 
to figure such a little dark anatomy of a man, into 
the perpetrator of a madcap gambol. Indeed, the 
two college chums presented pictures of what men 
may be made by their different lots in life ; the 
'Squire had left the university to live lustily on 
his paternal domains, in the vigorous enjoyment of 
prosperity and sunshine, and had flourished on to 
a hearty and florid old age ; whilst the poor par- 
son, on the contrary, had dried and withered 
away, among dusty tomes, in the silence and 
shadows of his study. Still there seemed to be a 
spark of almost extinguished fire, feebly glimmer- 
ing in the bottom of his soul ; and, as the 'Squire 



68 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

hinted at a sly story of the parson and a pretty 
milkmaid whom they once met on the banks of the 
Isis,^ the old gentleman made an " alphabet of 
faces," which, as far as I could decipher his physi- 
ognomy, I verily believe was indicative of laugh- 
ter ; — indeed, I have rarely met with an old 
gentleman that took absolute offense at the im- 
puted gallantries of his youth. 

I f omid the tide of wine and wassail fast gaining 
on the dry land of sober judgment. The company 
grew merrier and louder, as their jokes grew 
duller. Master Simon was in as chirping a liumor 
as a grasshopper filled with dew ; his old songs 
grew of a warmer complexion, and he began to 
talk maudlin about the widow. He even gave a 
long song about the wooing of a widow, which he 
informed me he had gathered from an excellent 
black-letter work entitled '' Cupid's Solicitor for 
Love " ; containing store of good advice for bach- 
elors, and which he promised to lend me ; the first 
verse was to this effect : — 

He that will woo a widow must not dally, 
He must make hay while the sun doth shine, 

He must not stand with her, shall I, shall I, 
But boldly say, Widow, thou must be mine. 

This song inspired the fat-headed old gentle- 
man, who made several attempts to tell a rather 
broad story of Joe Miller, that was pat to the pur- 
pose ; but he always stuck in the middle, every- 

iThe river which flows through Oxford. 



AMEBIC AN ESSAYS 69 

body recollecting the latter part excepting himself. 
The parson, too, began to show the effects of good 
cheer, having gradually settled down into a doze, 
and his wig sitting most suspiciously on one side. 
Just at this juncture, we were summoned to the 
drawing-room, and I suspect, at the private insti- 
gation of mine host, whose joviality seemed always 
tempered with a proper love of decorum. 

After the dinner-table was removed, the hall was 
given up to the younger members of the family, 
who, prompted to all kind of noisy mirth by the 
Oxonian and Master Simon, made its old walls 
ring with their merriment, as they played at romp- 
ing games. I delight in witnessing the gambols 
of children, and particularly at this happy holiday 
season, and could not help stealing out of the 
drawing-room on hearing one of their peals of 
laughter. I found them at the game of blind- 
man's-buff. Master Simon, who was the leader of 
their revels, and seemed on all occasions to fulfill 
the office of that ancient potentate, the Lord of 
Misrule,^ was blinded in the midst of the hall. The 
little beings were as busy about him as the mock 
fairies about Falstaff ; pinching him, plucking at the 
skirts of his coat, and tickling him with straws. 
One fine blue-eyed girl of about thirteen, with 

1 At Christmas there was in the Kinges house, wheresoever hee 
was lodged, a lorde of misrule, or mayster of merie disportes, and 
the like had ye in the house of every nobleman of honor, or good 
worshippe, were he spirituall or temporall. — Stow, quoted by 
Irving. 



70 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

her flaxen hair all in beautiful confusion, her 
frolic face in a glow, her frock half torn off her 
shoulders, a complete picture of a romp, was the 
chief tormentor ; and from the slyness with 
which Master Simon avoided the smaller game, 
and hemmed this wild little nymph in corners, 
and obliged her to jump shrieking over chairs, I 
suspected the rogue of being not a whit more 
blinded than was convenient. 

When I returned to the drawing-room, I found 
the company seated round the fire, listening to the 
parson, who was deeply ensconced in a high-backed 
oaken chair, the work of some cunning artificer of 
yore, which had been brought from the library 
for his particular accommodation. From this 
venerable piece of furniture, with which his 
shadowy figure and dark weazen face so admi- 
rably accorded, he was dealing forth strange 
accounts of the popular superstitions and legends 
of the surrounding country, with which he had 
become acquainted in the course of his antiquarian 
researches. I am inclined to think that the old 
gentleman was himself somewhat tinctured with 
superstition, as men are very apt to be, who live a 
recluse and studious life in a sequestered part of 
the country, and pore over black-letter tracts, so 
often filled with the marvelous and supernatural. 
He gave us several anecdotes of the fancies of the 
neighboring peasantry, concerning the effigy of 
the crusader, which lay on the tomb by the church 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 71 

altar. As it was the only monument of the kind 
in that part of the country, it had always been 
regarded with feelings of superstition by the good 
wives of the village. It was said to get up from 
the tomb and walk the rounds of the churchyard 
in stormy nights, particularly when it thundered ; 
and one old woman whose cottage bordered on the 
churchyard, had seen it through the windows of 
the church, when the moon shone, slowly pacing 
up and down the aisles. It was the belief that 
some wrong had been left unredressed by the 
deceased, or some treasure hidden, which kept the 
spirit in a state of trouble and restlessness. Some 
talked of gold and jewels buried in the tomb, over 
which the specter kept watch ; and there was a 
story current of a sexton, in old times, who en- 
deavored to break his way to the coffin at night ; 
but just as he reached it received a violent blow 
from the marble liand of the effigy, w^hich stretched 
him senseless on the pavement. These tales were 
often laughed at by some of the sturdier among 
the rustics ; yet, when night came on, there were 
many of the stoutest unbelievers that were shy of 
venturing alone in the footpath that led across the 
churchyard. 

From these and other anecdotes that followed, 
the crusader appeared to be the favorite hero of 
ghost stories throughout the vicinity. His picture, 
which hung up in the hall, was thought by the 
servants to have something supernatural about it : 



72 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

for they remarked that, in whatever part of the hall 
you went, the eyes of the warrior were still fixed on 
you. The old porter's wife, too, at the lodge, who 
had been born and brought up in the family, and 
was a great gossip among the maid-servants, 
affirmed, that in her young days she had often 
heard say, that on Midsummer eve, when it was 
well known all kinds of ghosts, goblins, and 
fairies, become visible and walk abroad, the cru- 
sader used to mount his horse, come down from 
his picture, ride about the house, down the avenue, 
and so to the church to visit the tomb ; on which 
occasion the church door most civilly swung open 
of itself ; not that he needed it — for he rode 
through closed gates and even stone walls, and 
had been seen by one of the dairy-maids to pass 
between two bars of the great park gate, making 
himself as thin as a sheet of paper. 

All these superstitions I found had been very 
much countenanced by the 'Squire, who though 
not superstitious himself, was very fond of seeing 
others so. He listened to every goblin tale of the 
neighboring gossips with infinite gravity, and held 
the porter's wife in high favor on account of her 
talent for the marvelous. He was himself a great 
reader of old legends and romances, and often 
lamented that he could not believe in them ; for a 
superstitious person, he thought, must live in a 
kind of fairy land. 

Whilst we were all attention to the patson's 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 73 

stories, our ears were suddenly assailed by a burst 
of heterogeneous sounds from the hall, in which 
were mingled something like the clang of rude 
minstrelsy, with the uproar of many small voices 
and girlish laughter. The door suddenly flew 
open, and a train came trooping into the room, 
that might almost have been mistaken for the 
breaking up of the court of Fairy. That indefat- 
igable spirit. Master Simon, in the faithful dis- 
charge of his duties as lord of misrule, had 
conceived the idea of a Christmas mummery, or 
masking ; and having called in to his assistance 
the Oxonian and the young officer, who were 
equally ripe for anything that should occasion 
romping and merriment, they had carried it into 
instant effect. The old housekeeper had been 
consulted ; the antique clothes-presses and ward- 
robes rummaged, and made to yield up the relics 
of finery that had not seen the light for several 
generations : the younger part of the company 
had been privately convened from parlor and hall, 
and the whole had been bedizened out, into a bur- 
lesque imitation of an antique masque. ^ 

Master Simon led the van as '' Ancient Christ- 
mas," quaintly appareled in a ruff, a short cloak, 
which had very much the aspect of one of the oUl 

1 Maskings or mummeries were favorite sports at Christmas, in 
old times, and the wardrobes at h^lls and manor-houses were often 
laid under contribution to furnish dresses and fantastic disguisings. 
I strongly suspect Master Simon to have taken the idea of his from 
Ben Jonson's '' Mask of Christmas."— Irving 's Note. 



74 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

housekeeper's petticoats, and a hat that might have 
served for a village steeple, and must indubitably 
have figured in the days of the Covenanters. From 
under this, his nose curved boldly forth, flushed 
with a frost-bitten bloom that seemed the very 
trophy of a December blast. He was accompanied 
by the blue-eyed romp, dished up as '' Dame Mince 
Pie," in the venerable magnificence of faded bro- 
cade, long stomacher, peaked hat and high-heeled 
shoes. The young officer appeared as Robin Hood, 
in a sporting dress of Kendal green, and a forag- 
ing cap with a gold tassel. 

The costume, to be sure, did not bear testimony 
to deep research, and there was an evident eye to 
the picturesque natural to a young gallant in pres- 
ence of his mistress. The fair Julia hung on his 
arm in a pretty rustic dress, as "Maid Marian." 
The rest of the train had been metamorphosed in 
various ways ; the girls trussed up in the finer}^ 
of the ancient belles of the Bracebridge line, and 
the striplings bewhiskered with burnt cork, and 
gravely clad in broad skirts, hanging sleeves, 
and full-bottomed wigs, to represent the char- 
acters of Roast Beef, Plum Pudding, and other 
worthies celebrated in ancient maskings. The 
whole was under the control of the Oxonian, in 
the appropriate character of Misrule ; and I ob- 
served that he exercised rather a mischievous 
sway with his wand over the smaller personages 
of the pageant. 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 75 

The irruption of this motley crew, with beat of 
drum, according to ancient custom, was the con- 
summation of uproar and merriment. Master 
Simon covered himself with glory by the stateli- 
ness with which, as Ancient Christmas, he walked 
a minuet with the peerless, though giggling, Dame 
Mince Pie. It was followed by a dance from all 
the characters, which, from its medley of costumes, 
seemed as though the old family portraits had 
skipped down from their frames to join in the 
sport. Different centuries were figuring at cross- 
hands and right and left; the dark ages were 
cutting pirouettes and rigadoons ; and the days 
of Queen Bess, jigging merrily down the middle, 
through a line of succeeding generations. 

The worthy 'Squire contemplated these fantas- 
tic sports, and this resurrection of his old ward- 
robe, with the simple relish of childish delight. 
He stood chuckling and rubbing his hands, and 
scarcely hearing a word the parson said, notwith- 
standing that the latter was discoursing most 
authentically on the ancient and stately dance 
of the Pavon, or peacock, from which he con- 
ceived the minuet to be derived.^ For my part, 

1 Sir John Hawkins, speaking of the dance called the Pavon, 
from pavo, a peacock, says, "It is a grave and majestic dance; the 
method of dancing it anciently was by gentlemen dressed with 
caps and swords, by those of the long robe in their gowns; by the 
peers in their mantles, and by the ladies in gowns with long trains, 
the motion whereof, in danchig, resembled that of a peacock.— 
" History of Music," quoted by Irving. 



76 HAWTHORJSTE CLASSICS 

I was in a continual excitement from the varied 
scenes of whim and innocent gayety passing before 
me. It was inspiring to see wild-eyed frolic and 
warm-hearted hospitality breaking out from among 
the chills and glooms of winter, and old age throw- 
ing off his apathy, and catching once more the 
freshness of youthful enjoyment. I felt also an 
interest in the scene, from the consideration that 
these fleeting customs Avere posting fast into obliv- 
ion, and that this was, perhaps, the only family in 
England in which the whole of them were still 
punctiliously observed. There was a quaintness, 
too, mingled vv^ith all this revelry, that gave it 
a peculiar zest : it was suited to the time and 
place ; and as the old Manor-house almost reeled 
with mirth and wassail, it seemed echoing back 
the joviality of long-departed years. 

But enough of Christmas and its gambols : it is 
time for me to pause in this garrulity. Methinks 
I hear the question asked by my graver readers, 
"To what purpose is all this — how is the world 
to be made wiser by this talk?" Alas! is there 
not wisdom enough extant for the instruction of 
the world? And if not, are there not thousands 
of abler pens laboring for its improvement ? — It 
is so much pleasanter to please than to instruct — 
to play the companion rather than the preceptor. 

What, after all, is the mite of wisdom that I 
could throw into the mass of knowledge ; or how 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 77 

am I sure that my sagest deductions may be safe 
guides for the opinions of others ? But in writing 
to amuse, if I fail, the only evil is my own dis- 
appointment. If, however, I can by any lucky 
chance, in these days of evil, rub out one wrinkle 
from the brow of care, or beguile the heavy heart 
of one moment of sorrow — if I can now and then 
penetrate through the gathering film of misan- 
thropy, prompt a benevolent view of human nature, 
and make my reader more in good humor with his 
fellow-beings and himself, surely, surely, I shall 
not then have written entirely in vain. 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY i 

When I behold, with deep astonishment, 
To famous Westminster how there resorte, 
Living in brasse or stony monument. 
The princes and the worthies of all sorte ; 
Doe not I see reformde nobilitie, 
Without contempt, or pride, or ostentation, 
And looke upon offenseless majesty, 
Naked of pomp or earthly domination ? 
And how a play-game of a painted stone 
Contents the quiet now and silent sprites, 
Whome all the world which late they stood upon, 
Could not content nor quench their appetite. 
Life is a frost of cold felicitie, 
And death the thaw of all our vanitie. 

Christolero'' s Epigrams, by T. B., 1598. 

1 The student will find it curious to compare this essay with 
Addison's and Goldsmith's essays on the same subject in " English 
Essays." Perhaps they will perceive a greater earnestness and 



78 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

On one of those sober and rather melancholy 
days, in the latter part of autumn, when the 
shadows of morning and evening almost mingle 
together, and throw a gloom over the decline of 
the year, I passed several hours in rambling about 
Westminster Abbey. There was something con- 
genial to the season in the mournful magnificence 
of the old pile ; and as I passed its threshold, it 
seemed like stepping back into the regions of 
antiquity, and losing myself among the shades of 
former ages. 

I entered from the inner court of Westminster 
school, through a long, low, vaulted passage, that 
had an almost subterranean look, being dimly 
lighted in one part by circular perforations in the 
massive walls. Through this dark avenue I had a 
distant view of the cloisters, with the figure of an 
old verger, in his black gown, moving along their 
shadowy vaults, and seeming like a specter from 
one of the neighboring tombs. 

The approach to .the abbey through these gloomy 
monastic remains, prepares the mind for its solemn 
contemplation. The cloister still retains some- 
thing of the quiet and seclusion of former days. 
The gray walls are discolored by damps, and crum- 
bling with age ; a coat of hoary moss has gathered 
over the inscriptions of the mural monuments, and 

sincerity in the words of this stranger, who yet, as it were, was vis- 
iting his old home. One should also read Thackeray's " Nil Nisi 
Bonum." 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 79 

obscured the death's heads, and other funeral em- 
blems. The sharp touches of the chisel are gone 
from the rich tracery of the arches ; the roses 
which adorned the key-stones have lost their 
leafy beauty ; everything bears marks of the 
gradual dilapidations of time, which yet has some- 
thing touching and pleasing in its very decay. 

The sun was pouring down a yellow autumnal 
ray into the square of the cloisters ; beaming upon 
a scanty plot of grass in the center, and lighting 
up an angle of the vaulted passage with a kind of 
dusty splendor. From between the arcades, the 
eye glanced up to a bit of blue sky, or a passing 
cloud; and beheld the sun-gilt pinnacles of the 
abbey towering into the azure heaven. 

As I paced the cloisters, sometimes contemplat- 
ing this mingled picture of glory and decay, and 
sometimes endeavoring to decipher the inscriptions 
on the tombstones, which formed the pavement 
beneath my feet, my eyes were attracted to three 
figures, rudely carved in relief, but nearly worn 
away by the footsteps of many generations. They 
were the effigies of three of the early abbots ; the 
epitaphs were entirely effaced ; the names alone 
remained, having no doubt been renewed in later 
times. (Vitalis. Abbas. 1082, and Gislebertus 
Crispinus. Abbas. 1114, and Laurentius. Abbas. 
1176.) I remained some little while, musing 
over these casual relics of antiquity, thus left like 
wrecks upon this distant shore of time, telling no 



80 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

tale but that such bemgs had been and had per- 
ished ; teaching no moral but the futility of that 
pride which hopes still to exact homage in its ashes, 
and to live in an inscription. A little longer, and 
even these faint records will be obliterated, and the 
monument will cease to be a memorial. Whilst 
I was yet looking down upon the gravestones, I 
was roused by the sound of the abbey clock, re- 
verberating from buttress to buttress, and echoing 
among the cloisters. It is almost startling to hear 
this warning of departed time sounding among 
the tombs, and telling the lapse of the hour, which, 
like a billow, has rolled us onward towards the 
grave. I pursued my walk to an arched door open- 
ing to the interior of the abbey. On entering here, 
the magnitude of the building breaks fully upon 
the mind, contrasted with the vaults of the clois- 
ters. The eye gazes with wonder at clustered 
columns of gigantic dimensions, with arches 
springing from them to such an amazing height ; 
and man wandering about their bases, shrunk into 
insignificance in comparison with his own handi- 
work. The spaciousness and gloom of this vast 
edifice produce a profound and mysterious awe. 
We step cautiously and softly about, as if fearful 
of disturbing the hallowed silence of the tomb; 
while every footfall whispers along the walls, and 
chatters among the sepulchers, making us more 
sensible of the quiet we have interrupted. 

It seems as if the awful nature of the place 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 81 

presses down upon the soul, and hushes the be- 
holder into noiseless reverence. We feel that we 
are surrounded by the congregated bones of the 
great men of past times, who have filled history 
with their deeds, and the earth with their renown. 
And yet it almost provokes a smile at the vanity 
of human ambition, to see how they are crowded 
together, and jostled in the dust ; what parsimony 
is observed in doling out a scanty nook — a gloomy 
corner — a little portion of earth, to those whom, 
when alive, kingdoms could not satisfy : and how 
many shapes, and forms, and artifices, are devised 
to catch the casual notice of the passenger, and 
save from forgetfulness, for a few short years, a 
name which once aspired to occupy ages of the 
world's thought and admiration. 

I passed some time in Poet's Corner, which occu- 
pies an end of one of the transepts or cross aisles 
of the abbey. The monuments are generally 
simple ; for the lives of literary men afford no 
striking themes for a sculptor. Shakespeare and 
Addison have statues erected to their memories ; 
but the greater part have busts, medallions, and 
sometimes mere inscriptions. Notwithstanding 
the simplicity of these memorials, I have always 
observed that the visitors to the abbey remain 
longest about them. A kinder and fonder feeling 
takes place of that cold curiosity or vague admi- 
ration with which they gaze on the splendid monu- 
ments of the great and the heroic. They linger 



82 HAWTHOBNE CLASSICS 

about these as about the tombs of friends and 
companions ; for indeed there is something of 
companionship between the author and the reader. 
Other men are known to posterity only through 
the medium of history, which is continually grow- 
ing faint and obscure ; but the intercourse between 
the author and his fellow-men is ever new, active, 
and immediate. He has lived for them more than 
for himself ; he has sacrificed surrounding enjoy- 
ments, and shut himself up from the delights of 
social life, that he might the more intimately com- 
mune with distant minds and distant ages. Well 
may the world cherish his renown ; for it has been 
purchased, not by deeds of violence and blood, but 
by the diligent dispensation of pleasure. Well 
may posterity be grateful to his memory ; for he 
has left it an inheritance, not of empty names and 
sounding actions, but whole treasures of wisdom, 
bright gems of thought, and golden veins of 
language. 

From Poet's Corner I continued my stroll 
towards that part of the abbey which contains 
the sepulchers of the kings. I wandered among 
what once were chapels, but which are now occu- 
pied by the tombs and monuments of the great. 
At every turn, I met with some illustrious name, 
or the cognizance of some powerful house re- 
nowned in history. As the eye darts into these 
dusky chambers of death, it catches glimpses of 
quaint effigies : some kneeling in niches, as if in 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 83 

devotion ; others stretched upon the tombs, with 
hands piously pressed together ; warriors in armor, 
as if reposing after battle ; prelates, with crosiers 
and miters ; and nobles in robes and coronets, 
lying as it were in state. In glancing over this 
scene, so strangely populous, yet where every form 
is so still and silent, it seems almost as if we were 
treading a mansion of that fabled city, where every 
being had been suddenly transmuted into stone. 

I paused to contemplate a tomb on which lay 
the effigy of a knight in complete armor. A large 
buckler was on one arm ; the hands were pressed 
together in supplication upon the breast ; the face 
was almost covered by the morion ; the legs were 
crossed in token of the warrior's having been en- 
gaged in the holy war. It was the tomb of a cru- 
sader ; of one of those military enthusiasts, who 
so strangely mingled religion and romance, and 
whose exploits form the connecting link betw^een 
fact and fiction — between the history and the 
fairy tale. There is something extremely pictu- 
resque in the tombs of these adventurers, deco- 
rated as they are with rude armorial bearings and 
Gothic sculpture. They comport with the anti- 
quated chapels in which they are generally found ; 
and in considering them, the imagination is apt to 
kindle with the legendary associations, the roman- 
tic fictions, the chivalrous pomp and pageantry, 
which poetry has spread over the wars for the 
Sepulcher of Christ. They are the relics of times 



84 HA WTHOENE CLA SSICS 

utterly gone by ; of beings passed from recollec- 
tion ; of customs and manners with which ours 
have no affinity. They are like objects from some 
strange and distant land of which we have no 
certain knowledge, and about which all our con- 
ceptions are vague and visionary. There is some- 
thing extremely solemn and awful in those effigies 
on Gothic tombs, extended as if in the sleep of 
death, or in the supplication of the dying hour. 
They have an effect infinitely more impressive on 
my feelings than the fanciful attitudes, the over- 
wrought conceits, and allegorical groups, which 
abound on modern monuments. I have been 
struck, also, with the superiority of many of the 
old sepulchral inscriptions. There was a noble 
way, in former times, of saying things simply, and 
yet saying them proudly : and I do not know an 
epitaph that breathes a loftier consciousness of 
family worth and honorable lineage, than one 
which affirms, of a noble house, that "all the 
brothers were brave, and all the sisters virtuous." 
In the opposite transept to Poet's Corner, stands 
a monument which is among the most renowned 
achievements of modern art ; but which, to me, 
appears horrible rather than sublime. It is the 
tomb of Mrs. Nightingale, by Roubillac. The 
bottom of the monument is represented as throw- 
ing open its marble doors, and a sheeted skeleton 
is starting forth. The shroud is falling from his 
fleshless frame as he launches his dart at his vie- 



AMEBIC AN ESSAYS 85 

tim. She is sinking into her affrighted husband's 
arms, who strives, with vain and frantic effort, to 
avert the blow. The whole is executed with terri- 
ble truth and spirit ; we almost fancy we hear the 
gibbering yell of triumph, bursting from the dis- 
tended jaws of the specter. — But why should we 
thus seek to clothe death with unnecessary ter- 
rors, and to spread horrors round the tomb of those 
we love? The grave should be surrounded by 
everything that might inspire tenderness and 
veneration for the dead ; or that might win the 
living to virtue. It is the place, not of disgust 
and dismay, but of sorrow and meditation. 

While wandering about these gloomy vaults and 
silent aisles, studjdng the records of the dead, the 
sound of busy existence from without occasionally 
reaches the ear : the rumbling of the passing 
equipage ; the murmur of the multitude ; or per- 
haps the light laugh of pleasure. The contrast 
is striking with the deathlike repose around ; 
and it has a strange effect upon the feelings, 
thus to hear the surges of active life hurrying 
along and beating against the very walls of the 
sepulcher. 

I continued in this way to move from tomb to 
tomb, and from chapel to chapel. The day was 
gradually wearing away ; the distant tread of 
loiterers about the abbey grew less and less fre- 
quent ; the sweet-tongued bell was summoning to 
evening prayers ; and I saw at a distance the 



86 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

choristers, in their white surplices, crossing the 
aisle and entering the choir. I stood before 
the entrance to Henry the Seventh's chapel. A 
flight of steps leads up to it, through a deep and 
gloomy, but magnificent arch. Great gates of 
brass, richly and delicately wrought, turn heavily 
upon their hinges, as if proudly reluctant to admit 
the feet of common mortals into this most gorgeous 
of sepulchers. 

On entering, the eye is astonished by the pomp 
of architecture, and the elaborate beauty of sculp- 
tured detail. The very walls are wrought into 
universal ornament, incrusted with tracery, and 
scooped into niches, crowded with the statues of 
saints and martyrs. Stone seems, by the cunning 
labor of the chisel, to have been robbed of its 
weight and density, suspended aloft, as if by magic, 
and the fretted roof achieved with the wonderful 
minuteness and airy security of a cobweb. 

Along the sides of the chapel are the lofty stalls 
of the Knights of the Bath, richly carved of oak, 
though with the grotesque decorations of Gothic 
architecture. On the pinnacles of the stalls are 
affixed the helmets and crests of the knights, with 
their scarfs and swords ; and above them are sus- 
pended their banners, emblazoned with armorial 
bearings, and contrasting the splendor of gold and 
purple and crimson, with the cold gray fretwork 
of the roof. In the midst of this grand mausoleum 
stands the sepulcher of its founder, — his effigy, 



AMEBIC AN ESSAYS 87 

with that of his queen, extended on a sumptuous 
tomb, and the whole surrounded by a superbly 
wrought brazen railing. 

There is a sad dreariness in this magnificence ; 
this strange mixture of tombs and trophies ; these 
emblems of living and aspiring ambition, close 
beside momentos which show the dust and oblivion 
in which all must sooner or later terminate. 
Nothing impresses the mind with a deeper feeling 
of loneliness, than to tread the silent and deserted 
scene of former throng and pageant. On looking 
round on the vacant stalls of the knights and their 
esquires, and on the rows of dusty but gorgeous 
banners that were once borne before them, my 
imagination conjured up the scene when this hall 
was bright with the valor and beauty of the land ; 
glittering with the splendor of jeweled rank and 
military array ; alive with the tread of many feet, 
and the hum of an admiring multitude. All had 
passed away ; the silence of death had settled 
again upon the place ; interrupted only by the 
casual chirping of birds, which had found their 
way into the chapel, and built their nests among 
its friezes and pendants — sure signs of solitariness 
and desertion. When I read the names inscribed 
on the banners, they were those of men scattered 
far and wide about the world ; some tossing upon 
distant seas ; some under arms in distant lands ; 
some mingling in the busy intrigues of courts and 
cabinets ; all seeking to deserve one more distinc- 



88 HAWTHOBNE CLASSICS 

tion in this mansion of sliadowy honors — the 
melancholy reward of a monument. 

Two small aisles on each side of this chapel 
present a touching instance of the equality of the 
grave, which brings down the oppressor to a level 
with the oppressed, and mingles the dust of the 
bitterest enemies together. In one is the sepul- 
cher of the haughty Elizabeth ; in the other is 
that of her victim, the lovely and unfortunate 
Mary.i Not an hour in the day, but some ejacula- 
tion of pity is uttered over the fate of the latter, 
mingled with indignation at her oppressor. The 
walls of Elizabeth's sepulcher continually echo 
with the sighs of sympathy heaved at the grave 
of her rival. 

A peculiar melancholy reigns over the aisle 
where Mary lies buried. The light struggles 
dimly through windows darkened by dust. The 
greater part of the place is in deep shadow, and 
the walls are stained and tinted by time and 
weather. A marble figure of Mary is stretched 
upon the tomb, round which is an iron railing, 
much corroded, bearing her national emblem — 
the thistle. I was weary with wandering, and 
sat down to rest myself by the monument, revolv- 
ing in my mind the checkered and disastrous 
story of poor Mary. 

The sound of casual footsteps had ceased from 
the abbey. I could only hear, now and then, the 

1 Queen of Scots. 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 89 

distant voice of the priest repeating the evening 
service, and the faint responses of the choir ; these 
paused for a time, and all was hushed. The still- 
ness, the desertion and obscurity that were gradu- 
ally prevailing around, gave a deeper and more 
solemn interest to the place : 

For in the silent grave no conversation, 
No joyful tread of friends, no voice of lovers. 
No careful father's counsel — nothing's heard, 
For nothing is, but all oblivion. 
Dust, and an endless darkness. 

Suddenly the notes of the deep-laboring organ 
burst upon the ear, falling with doubled and re- 
doubled intensity, and rolling, as it were, huge 
billows of sound. How well do their volume and 
grandeur accord with this mighty building ! With 
what pomp do they swell through its vast vaults, 
and breathe their awful harmony through these 
caves of death, and make the silent sepulcher 
vocal ! — And now they rise in triumphant accla- 
mation, heaving higher and higher their accordant 
notes, and piling sound on sound. — And now they 
pause, and the soft voices of the choir break out 
into sweet gushes of melody ; they soar aloft, and 
warble along the roof, and seem to play about 
these lofty vaults like the pure airs of heaven. 
Again the pealing organ heaves its thrilling 
thunders, compressing air into music, and roll- 
ing it forth upon the soul. What long-drawn 
cadences ! What solemn sweeping concords ! 



90 HAWTHOBNE CLASSICS 

It grows more and more dense and powerful — 
it fills the vast pile, and seems to jar the very 
walls — the ear is stunned — the senses are over- 
whelmed. And now it is winding up in full 
jubilee — it is rising from the earth to heaven — 
the very soul seems rapt away, and floated up- 
wards on this swelling tide of harmony ! 

I sat for some time lost in that kind of reverie 
which a strain of music is apt sometimes to in- 
spire : the shadows of evening were gradually 
thickening around me ; the monuments began to 
cast deeper and deeper gloom ; and the distant 
clock again gave token of the slowly waning day. 

I arose, and prepared to leave the abbey. As I 
descended the flight of steps which lead into the 
body of the building, my eye was caught by the 
shrine of Edward the Confessor, and I ascended 
the small staircase that conducts to it, to take 
from thence a general survey of this wilderness of 
tombs. The shrine is elevated upon a kind of 
platform, and close around it are the sepulchers 
of various kings and queens. From this eminence 
the eye looks down between pillars and funeral 
trophies to the chapels and chambers below, 
crowded with tombs ; where warriors, prelates, 
courtiers, and statesmen, lie moldering in "their 
beds of darkness." Close by me stood the great 
chair of coronation, rudely carved of oak, in the 
barbarous taste of a remote and Gothic age. The 
scene seemed almost as if contrived, with theatri- 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 91 

cal artifice, to produce an effect upon the beholder. 
Here was a type of the beginning and the end of 
human pomp and power ; here it was literally but 
a step from tlie throne to the sepulcher. Would 
not one think that these incongruous mementos 
had been gathered together as a lesson to living 
greatness ? — to show it, even in the moment of 
its proudest exaltation, the neglect and dishonor 
to which it must soon arrive ? how soon that 
crown which encircles its brow must pass away ; 
and it must lie down in the dust and disgraces of 
the tomb, and be trampled upon by the feet of the 
meanest of the multitude ? For, strange to tell, 
even the grave is here no longer a sanctuary. 
There is a shocking levity in some natures, which 
leads them to sport with awful and hallowed 
things ; and there are base minds, which delight 
to revenge on the illustrious dead the abject 
homage and groveling servility which they pay to 
the living. The coffin of Edward the Confessor 
has been broken open, and his remains despoiled 
of their funeral ornaments ; the scepter has been 
stolen from the hand of the imperious Elizabeth, 
and the effigy of Henry the Fifth lies headless. 
Not a royal monument but bears some proof 
how false and fugitive is the homage of man- 
kind. Some are plundered, some mutilated ; some 
covered with ribaldry and insult — all more or less 
outraged and dishonored ! 

The last beams of day were now faintly stream- 



92 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

ing through the painted windows in the high 
vaults above me ; the lower parts of the abbey 
were already wrapped in the obscurity of twilight. 
The chapels and aisles grew darker and darker. 
The effigies of the kings faded into shadows ; the 
marble figures of the monuments assumed strange 
shapes in the uncertain light ; the evening breeze 
crept through the aisles like the cold breath of the 
grave ; and even the distant footfall of a verger, 
traversing the Poet's Corner, had something 
strange and dreary in its sound. I slowly re- 
traced my morning's walk, and as I passed out 
at the portal of the cloisters, the door, closing with 
a jarring noise behind me, filled the whole building 
with echoes. 

I endeavored to form some arrangement in my 
mind of the objects I had been contemplating, but 
found they were already falling into indistinctness 
and confusion. Names, inscriptions, trophies, had 
all become confounded in my recollection, though 
I had scarcely taken my foot from off the thresh- 
old. What, thought I, is this vast assemblage of 
sepulchers but a treasury of humiliation ; a huge 
pile of reiterated homilies on the emptiness of 
renown, and the certainty of oblivion ? It is, 
indeed the empire of Death ; his great shadowy 
palace; where he sits in state, mocking at the 
relics of human glory, and spreading dust and 
forgetfulness on the monuments of princes. How 
idle a boast, after all, is the immortality of a name ! 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 93 

Time is ever silently turning over his pages ; we 
are too much engrossed by the story of the present, 
to think of the characters and anecdotes that give 
interest to the past ; and each age is a volume 
thrown aside to be speedily forgotten. The idol 
of to-day pushes the hero of yesterday out of our 
recollection ; and will, in turn, be supplanted by 
his successor of to-morrow. " Our fathers," says 
Sir Thomas Brown, " find their graves in our 
short memories, and sadly tell us how we may 
be buried in our survivors." History fades into 
fable ; fact becomes clouded with doubt and con- 
troversy ; the inscription molders from the tablet; 
the statue falls from the pedestal. Columns, arches, 
pyramids, what are they but heaps of sand — and 
their epitaphs, but characters written in the dust ? 
What is the security of a tomb, or the perpetuity 
of an embalmment ? The remains of Alexander 
the Great have been scattered to the wind, and his 
empty sarcophagus is now the mere curiosity of a 
museum. '' The Egyptian mummies, which Cam- 
byses or time hath spared, avarice now consumeth ; 
Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for 
balsams."^ 

What then is to insure this pile, which now 
towers above me from sharing the fate of mightier 
mausoleums ? The time must come when its 
gilded vaults which now spring so loftily, shall 
lie in rubbish beneath the feet ; when instead of 

1 Sir Thomas Browne. 



94 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

the sound of melody and praise, the winds shall 
whistle through the broken arches, and the owl 
hoot from the shattered tower, — when the garish 
sunbeam shall break into these gloomy mansions 
of death ; and the ivy twine round the fallen 
columns ; and the fox-glove hand its blossoms 
about the nameless urn, as if in mockery of the 
dead. Thus man passes away ; his name passes 
from recollection ; his history is a tale that is told, 
and his very monument becomes a ruin. 



FROM "PRUE AND I 



?> 



DINNER TIME 

'' Within this hour it will be dinner time ; 
I'll view the manners of the town, 
Peruse the traders, gaze upon the buildings." 

Comedy of Errors. 

In the warm afternoons of the early summer, it 
is my pleasure to stroll about Washington Square 
and along the Fifth Avenue,^ at the hour when 
the diners-out are hurrying to the tables of the 
wealthy and refined. I gaze with placid delight 
upon the cheerful expanse of white waistcoat that 
illumines those streets at that hour, and mark the 
variety of emotions that swell beneath all that 
purity. A man going out to dine has a singular 
cheerfulness of aspect. Except for his gloves, 
which fit so well, and which he has carefully but- 
toned, that he may not make an awkward pause 
in the hall of his friend's house, I am sure he 
would search his pocket for a cent to give the wan 
beggar at the corner. It is impossible just now, 
my dear woman ; but God bless you ! 

1 Fifth Avenue begins in Washington Square. 
95 



96 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

It is pleasant to consider that simple suit of 
black. If my man be young and only lately cog- 
nizant of the rigors of the social law, he is a little 
nervous at being seen in his dress suit — body coat 
and black trousers — before sunset. For in the 
last days of May the light lingers long over the 
freshly leaved trees in the Square, and lies warm 
along the Avenue. All winter the sun has not 
been permitted to see dresscoats. They come out 
only with the stars, and fade with ghosts, before 
the dawn. Except, haply, they be brought home- 
ward before breakfast in an early twilight of hack- 
ney-coach. Now, in the budding and bursting 
summer, the sun takes his revenge, and looks 
aslant over the treetops and the chimneys upon 
the most unimpeachable garments. A cat may 
look upon a king. 

I know my man at a distance. If I am chat- 
ting with the nursery maids around the fountain, 
I see him upon the broad walk of Washington 
Square, and detect him by the freshness of his 
movement, his springy gait. Then the white 
waistcoat flashes in the sun. 

'' Go on, happy youth," I exclaim aloud, to the 
great alarm of the nursery maids, who suppose me 
to be an innocent insane person suffered to go at 
large, unattended — " go on, and be happy with 
fellow-waistcoats over fragrant wines." 

It is hard to describe the pleasure in this ami- 
able spectacle of a man going out to dine. I, who 



AMEBIC AJSr ESSAYS 97 

am a quiet family man, and take a quiet family 
cut at four o'clock ; or, when I am detained down- 
town by a false quantity in my figures, who run 
into Delmonico's ^ and seek comfort in a cutlet, 
am rarely invited to dinner, and have few white 
waistcoats. Indeed, my dear Prue tells me that 
1 have but one in the world, and I often want to 
confront my eager young friends as they bound 
along, and ask abruptly, "What do you think of 
a man whom one white waistcoat suffices ? " 

By the time I have eaten my modest repast, it 
is the hour for the diners-out to appear. If the 
day is unusually soft and sunny, I hurry my simple 
meal a little, that I may not lose any of my favor- 
ite spectacle. Then I saunter out. If you met 
me you would see that I am also clad in black. 
But black is my natural color, so that it begets no 
false theories concerning my intentions. Nobody, 
meeting me in full black, supposes that I am going 
to dine out. That somber hue is professional with 
me. It belongs to bookkeepers as to clergymen, 
physicians, and undertakers. We wear it because 
we follow solemn callings. Saving men's bodies 
and souls, or keeping the machinery of business 
well wound, are such sad professions that it is 
becoming to drape dolefully those who adopt 
them. 

I wear a white cravat, too, but nobody supposes 

1 Delmonico's has changed since it was a pleasant dining-place for 
elderly book-keepers. 



98 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

that it is in any danger of being stained by La- 
fitte.^ It is a limp cravat with a craven tie. It 
has none of the dazzling dash of the white that 
my young friends sport, or, I should say, sported ; 
for the white cravat is now abandoned to the 
somber professions of which I spoke. My young 
friends suspect that the flunkeys of the British 
noblemen wear such ties, and they have, therefore, 
discarded them. I am sorry to remark, also, an 
uneasiness, if not downright skepticism, about the 
white waistcoat. Will it extend to shirts, I ask 
myself with sorrow. 

But there is something pleasarxter to contem- 
plate during these quiet strolls of mine than the 
men who are going to dine out, and that is, the 
women. They roll in carriages to the happy 
houses which they shall honor, and I strain my 
eyes in at the carriage window to see their cheerful 
faces as they pass. I have already dined ; upon 
beef and cabbage, probably, if it is boiled day. 
I am not expected at the table to which Aurelia 
is hastening, yet no guest there shall enjoy more 
than I enjoy — nor so much, if he considers the 
meats the best part of the dinner. The beauty 
of the beautiful Aurelia I see and worship as she 
drives by. The vision of many beautiful Aure- 
lias driving to dinner is the mirage of that pleas- 
ant journey of mine along the avenue. I do not 
envy the Persian poets, on those afternoons, nor 

1 Or any other brand of claret. 



AMEBIC AN ESSAYS 99 

long to be an Arabian traveler. For I can walk 
that street, finer than any of which the Ispahan 
architects dreamed ; and I can see sultanas as 
splendid as the enthusiastic and exaggerating 
Orientals describe. 

But not only do I see and enjoy Aurelia's 
beauty. I delight in her exquisite attire. In 
these warm days she does not wear so much as the 
lightest shawl. She is clad only in the spring 
sunshine. It glitters in the soft darkness of her 
hair. It touches the diamonds, the opals, the pearls, 
that cling to her arms, and neck, and fingers. 
They flash back again, and the gorgeous silks 
glisten, and the light laces flutter, until the stately 
Aurelia seems to me, in tremulous radiance, 
swimming by. 

I doubt whether you who are to have the inex- 
pressible pleasure of dining with her, and even of 
sitting by her side, will enjoy more than I. For 
my pleasure is inexpressible, also. And it is in 
this greater than yours, that I see all the beautiful 
ones who are to dine at various tables, while j^ou 
only see your own circle, although that, I will not 
deny, is the most desirable of all. 

Besides, although my person is not present at 
your dinner, my fancy is. I see Aurelia's carriage 
stop, and behold white-gloved servants opening 
wide doors. There is a brief glimpse of magnifi- 
cence for the dull eyes of the loiterers outside ; 
then the door closes. But my fancy went in with 

LofC. 



100 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

Aurelia. With her, it looks at the vast mirror, 
and surveys her form at length in the Psyche- 
glass. It gives the final shake to the skirt, the 
last flirt to the embroidered handkerchief, care- 
fully held, and adjusts the bouquet, complete as a 
tropic nestling in orange leaves. It descends with 
her, and marks the faint blush upon her cheek at 
the thought of her exceeding beauty ; the con- 
sciousness of the most beautiful woman, that the 
most beautiful woman is entering the room. There 
is the momentary hush, the subdued greeting, the 
quick glance of the Aurelias who have arrived ear- 
lier, and who perceive in a moment the hopeless 
perfection of that attire ; the courtly gaze of 
gentlemen, who feel the serenity of that beauty. 
All this my fancy surveys; my fancy, Aurelia's 
invisible cavalier. 

You approach with hat ^ in hand and the thumb 
of your left hand in your waistcoat pocket. You 
are polished and cool, and have an irreproachable 
repose of manner. There are no improper wrinkles 
in your cravat ; your shirt-bosom does not bulge ; 
the trousers are accurate about your admirable 
boot. But you look very stiff and brittle. You 
are a little bullied by your unexceptionable shirt 
collar, which interdicts perfect freedom of move- 
ment in your head. You are elegant, undoubtedly, 
but it seems as if you might break and fall to 

1 It must have been the fashion to carry an opera-hat in to din- 
ner or perhaps only to the drawing-room. 



AMEBIC AN ESSAYS 101 

pieces, like a porcelain vase, if you were roughly 
shaken. 

Now, here, I have the advantage of you. My 
fancy quietly surveying the scene is subject to 
none of these embarrassments. My fancy will 
not utter commonplaces. That will not say to 
tlie superb lady, who stands with her flowers, 
incarnate May, '' What a beautiful day. Miss 
Aurelia." That will not feel constrained to say 
something, when it has nothing to say ; nor will 
it be obliged to smother all the pleasant things 
that occur, because they would be too flattering 
to express. My fancy perpetually murmurs in 
Aurelia's ear, "• Those flowers would not be fair 
in your hand, if you yourself were not fairer. 
That diamond necklace would be gaudy, if your 
eyes were not brighter. That queenly move- 
ment would be awkward, if your soul were not 
queenlier." 

You could not say such things to Aurelia, 
although, if you are worthy to dine at her side, 
they are the very things you are longing to say. 
What insufferable stuff you are talking about 
the weather, and the opera, and Alboni's deli- 
cious voice, and Newport, and Saratoga ! They 
are all very pleasant subjects, but do you sup- 
pose Ixion^ talked Thessalian politics when he 
was admitted to dine with Juno? 

I almost begin to pity you, and to believe that 

1 Ixion lived long ago, in the days of the Greek Mythology. 



102 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

a scarcity of white waistcoats is true wisdom. 
For now dinner is announced, and you, O rare 
felicity, are to hand down Aurelia. But you 
run the risk of tumbling her expansive skirt, 
and you have to drop your hat upon a chance 
chair, and wonder, en passant^ who will wear it 
home, which is annoying. My fancy runs no 
such risk ; is not at all solicitous about its hat, 
and glides by the side of Aurelia, stately as she. 
There! you stumble on the stair, and are vexed 
at your own awkwardness, and are sure you saw 
the ghost of a smile glimmer along that superb 
face at your side. My fancy doesn't tumble 
downstairs, and what kind of looks it sees upon 
Aurelia's face are its own secret. 

Is it any better, now you are seated at table ? 
Your companion eats little because she wishes 
little. You eat little because you think it is 
elegant to do so. It is a shabby, second-hand 
elegance, like your brittle behavior. It is just 
as foolish for you to play with the meats, when 
you ought to satisfy your healthy appetite gen- 
erously, as it is for you, in the drawing room, 
to affect that cool indifference when you have 
real and noble interests. 

I grant you that fine manners, if you please, 
are a fine art. But is not monotony the destruc- 
tion of art? Your manners, O happy Ixion, ban- 
queting with Juno, are Egyptian. They have no 
perspective, no variety. They have no color, no 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 103 

shading. They are all on a dead level ; they are 
flat. Now, for you are a man of sense, you are 
conscious that those wonderful eyes of Aurelia see 
straight through all this network of elegant man- 
ners in which you have entangled yourself, and 
that consciousness is uncomfortable to you. It is 
another trick in the game for me, because those 
eyes do not pry into my fancy. How can they, 
since Aurelia does not know of my existence? 

Unless, indeed, she should remember the first 
time I saw her. It was only last year, in May. 
I had dined, somewhat hastily, in consideration 
of the fine day, and of my confidence that many 
would be wending dinnerwards that afternoon. 
I saw my Prue comfortably engaged in seating 
the trousers of Adoniram, our eldest boy, — an 
economical care to which my darling Prue is 
not unequal, even in these days and in this 
town, — and then hurried toward the avenue. 
It is never much thronged at that hour. The 
moment is sacred to dinner. As I paused at 
the corner of Twelfth Street, hj the church, you 
remember, I saw an apple-woman, from whose 
stores I determined to finish my dessert, which 
had been imperfect at home. But, mindful of 
meritorious and economical Prue, I was not the 
man to pay exorbitant prices for apples, and while 
still haggling with the wrinkled Eve who had 
tempted me, I became suddenly aware of a car- 
riage approaching, and, indeed, already close by. 



104 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

I raised my eyes, still munching an apple which 
I held in one hand, while the other grasped my 
walking stick (true to my instincts of dinner 
guests, as young women to a passing wedding 
or old ones to a funeral), and beheld Aurelia! 

Old in this kind of observation as I am, there 
was something so graciously alluring in the look 
that she cast upon me, as unconsciously, indeed, 
as she would have cast it upon the church, that, 
fumbling hastily for my spectacles to enjoy the 
boon more fully, I thoughtlessly advanced upon 
the apple-stand, and, in some indescribable man- 
ner, tripping, down we all fell into the street, old 
woman, apples, baskets, stand, and I, in promiscu- 
ous confusion. As I struggled there, somewhat 
bewildered, yet sufficiently self-possessed to look 
after the carriage, I beheld that beautiful woman 
looking at us through the back window (you could 
not have done it ; the integrity of your shirt collar 
would have interfered), and smiling pleasantly, 
so that her going around the corner was like a 
gentle sunset, so seemed she to disappear in her 
own smiling ; or — if j^ou choose, in view of the 
apple difficulties — like a rainbow after a storm. 

If the beautiful Aurelia recalls that event, she 
may know of my existence ; not otherwise. And 
even then she knows me only as a funny old 
gentleman, who, in his eagerness to look at her, 
tumbled over an apple woman. 

My fancy from that moment followed her. How 



AMEBIC AW ESSAYS 105 

grateful I was to the wrinkled Eve's extortion, 
and to the untoward tumble, since it procured me 
the sight of that smile. I took my sweet revenge 
from that. For I knew that the beautiful Aurelia 
entered the house of her host with beaming eyes, 
and my fanc}^ heard her sparkling story. You 
consider yourself happy because you are sitting 
by her and helping her to a lady-finger, or a maca- 
roon, for which she smiles. But I was her theme 
for ten mortal minutes. She was my bard, my 
blithe historian. She was the Homer of my luck- 
less Trojan fall. She set my mishap to music, in 
telling it. Think what it is to have inspired 
Urania ; ^ to have called a brighter beam into the 
eyes of Miranda; and do not tliink so much of 
passing Aurelia the mottoes, my dear young 
friend. 

There was the advantage of not going to that 
dinner. Had I been invited, as you were, I should 
have pestered Prue about the buttons on my white 
waistcoat, instead of leaving her placidly piercing 
adolescent trousers. She would have been flus- 
tered, fearful of being too late, of tumbling the 
garment, of soiling it, fearful of offending me in 
some way (admirable woman !), I, in my natural 
impatience, might have let drop a thoughtless 
word, which would have been a pang in her heart 
and a tear in her eye, for weeks afterward. 

As I walked nervously up the avenue (for I am 

1 The Heavenly Muse. 



106 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

unaccustomed to prandial recreations), I should 
not have had that solacing image of quiet Prue, 
and the trousers, as the background in the pic- 
tures of the gay figures I passed, making each, by 
contrast, fairer. I should have been wondering 
what to say and do at the dinner. I should surely 
have been very warm, and yet not have enjoyed 
the rich, waning sunlight. Need I tell you that 
I should not have stopped for apples, but instead 
of economically tumbling into the street with 
apples and apple women, whereby I merely rent 
my trousers across the knee, in a manner that 
Prue can readily, and at little cost, repair, I should, 
beyond perad venture, have split a new dollar-pair 
of gloves in the effort of straining my large hands 
into them, which would, also, have caused me 
additional redness in the face, and renewed flut- 
tering. 

Above all, I should not have seen Aurelia pass- 
ing in her carriage, nor would she have smiled at 
me, nor charmed my memory with her radiance, 
nor the circle at dinner with the sparkling Iliad 
of my woes. Then, at the table, I should not have 
sat by her. You would have had that pleasure; 
I should have led out the maiden aunt from the 
country, and have talked poultry, when I talked 
at all. Aurelia would not have remarked me. 
Afterward, in describing the dinner to her virtu- 
ous parents, she would have concluded, " and one 
old gentleman, whom I didn't know." 



AMEBIC AN ESSAYS 107 

No, my polished friend, whose elegant repose of 
manner I yet greatly commend, I am content, if 
you are. How much better it was that I was not 
invited to that dinner, but was permitted, by a 
kind fate, to furnish a subject for Aurelia's wit. 

There is one other advantage in sending your 
fancy to dinner, instead of going yourself. It is, 
that then the occasion remains wholly fair in your 
memory. You, who devote yourself to dining out, 
and who are to be daily seen affably sitting down 
to such feasts, as I know mainly by hearsay — by 
the report of waiters, guests, and others who were 
present — you cannot escape the little things that 
spoil the picture, and which the fancy does not 
see. 

For instance, in handing you the potage a la 
Bisque^ at the very commencement of this dinner 
to-day, John, the waiter, who never did such a 
thing before, did this time suffer the plate to tip, 
so that a little of that rare soup dripped into your 
lap — just enough to spoil those trousers, which is 
nothing to you, because you can buy a great many 
more trousers, but which little event is inharmoni- 
ous with the fine porcelain dinner service, with the 
fragrant wines, the glittering glass, the beautiful 
guests, and the mood of mind suggested by all of 
these. There is, in fact, if you will pardon a free 
use of the vernacular, there is a grease spot upon 
your remembrance of this dinner. 

Or, in the same way, and with the same kind of 



108 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

mental result, you can easily imagine the meats a 
little tough ; a suspicion of smoke somewhere in 
the sauces ; too much pepper, perhaps, or too little 
salt ; or there might be the graver dissonance of 
claret not properly attempered, or a choice Rhen- 
ish below the average mark, or the spilling of 
some of that Arethusa Madeira, marvelous for its 
innumerable circumnavigations of the globe, and 
for being as dry as the conversation of the host. 
These things are not up to the high level of the 
dinner ; for wherever Aurelia dines, all accessories 
should be as perfect in their kind as she, the prin- 
cipal, is in hers. 

That reminds me of a possible dissonance worse 
than all. Suppose that soup had trickled down 
the unimaginable berthe of Aurelia's dress (since 
it might have done so), instead of wasting itself 
upon your trousers ! Could even the irreproach- 
able elegance of your manners have contemplated, 
unmoved, a grease spot upon your remembrance 
of the peerless Aurelia ? 

You smile, of course, and remind me that that 
lady's manners are so perfect that, if she drank 
poison, she would wipe her mouth after it as 
gracefully as ever. How much more then, you 
say, in the case of such a slight contretemps as 
spotting her dress, would she appear totally 
unmoved. 

So she would, undoubtedly. She would be, and 
look, as pure as ever ; but, my young friend, her 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 109 

dress would not. Once I dropped a pickled oyster 
in the lap of my Prue, who wore, on the occasion, 
her sea-green silk gown. I did not love my Prue 
the less ; but there certainly was a very unhand- 
some spot upon her dress. And although I know 
my Prue to be spotless, yet, whenever I recall that 
day, I see her in a spotted gown, and I would pre- 
fer never to have been obliged to think of her in 
such a garment. 

Can you not make the application to the case, 
very likely to happen, of some disfigurement of 
that exquisite toilette of Aurelia's ? In going 
downstairs, for instance, why should not heavy 
old Mr. Carbuncle, who is coming close behind 
with Mrs. Peony, both very eager for dinner, 
tread upon the hem of that garment which my 
lips would grow pale to kiss ? The august Aure- 
lia, yielding to natural laws, would be drawn sud- 
denly backward — a very undignified movement 
— and the dress would be dilapidated. There 
would be apologies, and smiles, and forgiveness, 
and pinning up the pieces, nor would there be the 
faintest feeling of awkwardness or vexation in 
Aurelia's mind. But to you, looking on, and, 
beneath all that pure show of waistcoat, cursing 
old Carbuncle's carelessness, this tearing of dresses 
and repair of the toilette is by no means a poetic 
and cheerful spectacle. Nay, the very impatience 
that it produces in your mind jars upon the har- 
mony of the moment. 



110 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

You will respond, with proper scorn, that you 
are not so absurdly fastidious as to heed the little 
necessary drawbacks of social meetings, and that 
you have not much regard for ''the harmony of 
the occasion " (which phrase I fear you will repeat 
in a sneering tone). You will do very right in 
saying this ; and it is a remark to which I shall 
give all the hospitality of my mind, and I do so 
because I heartily coincide in it. I hold a man to 
be very foolish who will not eat a good dinner 
because the tablecloth is not clean, or who cavils 
at the spots upon the sun. But still a man who 
does not apply his eye to a telescope, or some kind 
of prepared medium, does not see those spots, while 
he has just as much light and heat as he who does. 

So it is with me. I walk in the avenue, and 
eat all the delightful dinners, without seeing the 
spots upon the tablecloth, and behold all the beau- 
tiful Aurelias without swearing at old Carbuncle. 
I am the guest who, for the small price of invisi- 
bility, drinks only the best wines, and talks only 
to the most agreeable people. That is something, 
I can tell you, for you might be asked to lead out 
old Mrs. Peony. My fancy slips in between you 
and Aurelia, sit you never so closely together. It 
not only hears what she says, but it perceives what 
she thinks and feels. It lies like a bee in her 
flowery thoughts, sucking all their honey. If 
there are unhandsome or unfeeling guests at 
table, it will not see them. It knows only the 



AMEBIC AN ESSAYS 111 

good and fair. As I stroll in the fading light and 
observe the stately houses, my fancy believes the 
host equal to his house, and the courtesy of his 
wife more agreeable than her conservatory. 

It will not believe that the pictures on the wall 
and the statues in the corners shame the guests. 
It will not allow that they are less than noble. It 
hears them speak gently of error, and warmly of 
worth. It knows that they commend heroism and 
devotion, and reprobate insincerity. My fancy is 
convinced that the guests are not only feasted 
upon the choicest fruits of every land and season, 
but are refreshed by a consciousness of greater 
loveliness and grace in human character. 

Now you, who actually go to the dinner, may 
not entirely agree with the view my fancy takes 
of that entertainment. Is it not, therefore, rather 
your loss? Or, to put it in another way, ought I 
to envy you the discovery that the guests are 
shamed by the statues and pictures ; — yes, and by 
the spoons and forks also, if they should chance 
neither to be so genuine nor so useful as those 
instruments? And, worse than this, when your 
fancy wishes to enjoy the picture which mine forms 
of that feast, it cannot do so, because you have 
foolishly interpolated the fact between the dinner 
and your fancy. 

Of course, by this time it is late twilight, and 
the spectacle I enjoyed is almost over. But not 
quite, for as I return slowly along the streets, the 



112 HAWTHOBNE CLASSICS 

windows are open, and only a thin haze of lace or 
muslin separates me from the paradise within. 

I see tlie graceful cluster of girls hovering over 
the piano, and the quiet groups of the elders in 
easy chairs, around little tables. I cannot hear 
what is said, nor plainly see the faces. But some 
hoyden evening wind, more daring than I, abruptly 
parts the cloud to look in, and out comes a gush 
of light, music, and fragrance, so that I shrink 
away into the dark, that I may not seem, even by 
chance, to have invaded that privacy. 

Suddenly there is singing. It is Aurelia, who 
does not cope with the Italian prima donna, nor 
sing indifferently to-night, what was sung superbly 
last evening at the opera. She has a strange, low, 
sweet voice, as if she only sang in the twilight. It 
is the ballad of " Allan Percy " that she sings. 
There is no dainty applause of kid gloves, when it 
is ended, but silence follows the singing, like a tear. 

Then you, my young friend, ascend into the 
drawing room, and, after a little graceful gossip, 
retire ; or you wait, possibly, to hand Aurelia into 
her carriage, and arrange a waltz for to-morrow 
evening. She smiles, you bow, and it is over. 
But it is not yet over with me. My fancy still 
follows her, and, like a prophetic dream, rehearses 
her destiny. For, as the carriage rolls away into 
the darkness and I return homeward, how can my 
fancy help rolling away also, into the dim future, 
watching her go down the years ? 



AMEBIC AN ESSAYS 113 

Upon my way home I see her m a thousand new- 
situations. My fancy says to me, " The beauty 
of this beautiful woman is heaven's stamp upon 
virtue. She will be equal to every chance that 
shall befall her, and she is so radiant and charm- 
ing in the circle of prosperity, only because she 
has that irresistible simplicity and fidelity of char- 
acter, which can also pluck the sting from adver- 
sity. Do you not see, you wan old bookkeeper in 
faded cravat, that in a poor man's house this 
superb Aurelia would be more stately than sculp- 
ture, more beautiful than painting, and more 
graceful than the famous vases ? Would her hus- 
band regret the opera if she sang ' Allan Percy ' to 
him in the twilight? Would he not feel richer 
than the Poets, when his eyes rose from their 
jeweled pages, to fall again dazzled by the splen- 
dor of his wife's beauty? " 

At this point in my reflections I sometimes run, 
rather violently, against a lamp post, and then 
proceed along the street more sedately. 

It is yet early when I reach home, where my 
Prue awaits me. The children are asleep, and the 
trousers mended. The admirable woman is patient 
of my idiosyncrasies, and asks me if I have had a 
pleasant walk, and if there were many fine dinners 
to-day, as if I had been expected at a dozen tables. 
She even asks me if I have seen the beautiful 
Aurelia (for there is always some Aurelia), and 
inquires what dress she wore. I respond, and 



114 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

dilate upon what I have seen. Prue listens, as the 
children listen to her fairy tales. We discuss 
the little stories that penetrate our retirement, of 
the great people who actually dine out. Prue, 
with fine womanly instinct, declares it a shame 

that Aurelia should smile for a moment upon , 

yes, even upon you, my friend of the irreproach- 
able manners ! 

" I know him," says my simple Prue ; " I have 
watched his cold courtesy, his insincere devotion. 
I have seen him acting in the boxes at the opera, 
much more adroitly than the singers upon the 
stage. I have read his determination to marry 
Aurelia; and I shall not be surprised," concludes 
my tender wife sadly, " if he wins her at last, by 
tiring her out, or, by secluding her by his constant 
devotion from the homage of other men, convinces 
her that she had better marry him, since it is so 
dismal to live on unmarried." 

And so, my friend, at the moment when the 
bouquet you ordered is arriving at Aurelia's house, 
and she is sitting before the glass while her maid 
arranges the last flower in her hair, my darling 
Prue, whom you will never hear of, is shedding 
tears over your probable union, and I am sitting 
by, adjusting my cravat and incontinently clear- 
ing my throat. 

It is rather a ridiculous business, I allow; yet you 
will smile at it tenderly, rather than scornfully, if 
you remember that it shows how closely linked we 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 115 

creatures are, without knowing it, and that more 
hearts than we dream of enjoy our happiness and 
share our sorrow. 

Thus, I dine at great tables uninvited, and, 
unknown, converse with the famous beauties. If 
Aurelia is at last engaged (but who is worthy ?) 
she will, with even greater care, arrange that won- 
drous toilette, will teach that lace a fall more 
alluring, those gems a sweeter light. But even 
then, as she rolls to dinner in her carriage, glad 
that she is fair, not for her own sake nor for the 
world's, but for that of a single youth (who I hope, 
has not been smoking at the club all the morn- 
ing), I, sauntering upon the sidewalk, see her pass, 
I pay homage to her beauty, and her lover can do 
no more ; and if, perchance, my garments — which 
must seem quaint to her, with their shining knees 
and carefully brushed elbows ; my white cravat, 
careless, yet prim ; my meditative movements, as 
I put my stick under my arm to pare an apple, and 
not, I hope, this time to fall into the street — 
should remind her, in her spring of youth, and 
beauty, and love, that there are age, and care, and 
poverty, also ; then, perhaps, the good fortune of 
the meeting is not wholly mine. 

For, O beautiful Aurelia, two of these things, 
at least, must come even to you. There will be a 
time when you will no longer go out to dinner, or 
only very quietly, in the family. I shall be gone 
then ; but other old bookkeepers in white cravats 



116 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

will inherit my tastes, and saunter, on summer 
afternoons, to see what I loved to see. 

They will not pause, I fear, in buying apples, to 
look at the old lady in venerable cap, who is roll- 
ing by in the carriage. They will worship another 
Aurelia. You will not wear diamonds or opals 
any more, only one pearl upon your blue-veined 
finger — your engagement ring. Grave clergy- 
men and antiquated beaux will hand you down to 
dinner, and the group of polished youth, who 
gather around the yet unborn Aurelia of that day, 
will look at you sitting quietly upon the sofa, and 
say softly, " She must have been very handsome in 
her time." 

All this must be : for consider how few years 
since it was your grandmother who was the belle, 
by whose side the handsome young men longed to 
sit and pass expressive mottoes. Your grand- 
mother was the Aurelia of a half-century ago, 
although you cannot fancy her young. She is 
indissolubly associated in your mind with caps and 
dark dresses. You can believe Mary Queen of 
Scots, or Nell Gwyn, or Cleopatra, to have been 
young and blooming, although they belong to old 
and dead centuries, but not your grandmother. 
Think of those who shall believe the same of you 
— you, who to-day are the very flower of youth. 

Might I plead with you, Aurelia — I, who would 
be too happy to receive one of those graciously 
beaming bows that I see you bestow upon young 



AMEBIC AN ESSAYS 117 

men, in passing — I would ask you to bear that 
thought with you, always, not to sadden your 
sunny smile, but to give it a more subtle grace. 
Wear in your summer garland this little leaf of 
rue. It will not be the skull at the feast, it will 
rather be the tender thoughtfulness in the face of 
the young Madonna. 

For the years pass like summer clouds, Aurelia, 
and the children of yesterday are the wives and 
mothers of to-day. Even I do sometimes discover 
the mild eyes of my Prue fixed pensively upon my 
face, as if searching for the bloom which she re- 
members there in the days, long ago, when we 
were young. She will never see it there again, 
any more than the flowers she held in her hand, in 
our old spring rambles. Yet the tear that slowly 
gathers as she gazes, is not grief that the bloom has 
faded from my cheek, but the sweet consciousness 
that it can never fade from my heart ; and as her 
eyes fall upon her work again, or the children 
climb her lap to hear the old fairy tales they 
already know by heart, my wife Prue is dearer to 
me than the sweetheart of those days long ago. 



118 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

SEA FROM SHORE 

*' Come unto these yellow sands." 

The Tempest. 

*' Argosies of magic sails, 
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales." 

Locksley Hall. 

In the month of June, Prue and I like to walk 
upon the Battery toward sunset, and watch the 
steamers, crowded with passengers, bound for the 
pleasant places along the coast where people pass 
the hot months. Seaside lodgings are not very 
comfortable, I am told ; but who would not be a 
little pinched in his chamber, if his windows 
looked upon the sea ? 

In such praises of the ocean do I indulge at 
such times, and so respectfully do I regard the 
sailors who may chance to pass, that Prue often 
says, with her shrewd smiles, that my mind is a 
kind of Greenwich Hospital,^ full of abortive ma- 
rine hopes and wishes, broken-legged intentions, 
blind regrets, and desires whose hands have been 
shot away in some hard battle of experience, so 
that they cannot grasp the results toward which 
they reach. 

She is right, as usual. Such hopes and inten- 
tions do lie, ruined and hopeless now, strewn about 
the placid contentment of my mental life, as the 

1 An old-sailors' hospital in England. 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 119 

old pensioners sit about the grounds at Greenwich, 
maimed and musing in the quiet morning sun- 
shine. Many a one among them thinks what a 
Nelson he would have been if both his legs had 
not been prematurely carried away ; or in what a 
Trafalgar of triumph he would have ended, if, 
unfortunately, he had not happened to have been 
blown blind by the explosion of that unlucky 
magazine. 

So I dream, sometimes, of a straight scarlet 
collar, stiff with gold lace, around my neck, in- 
stead of this limp white cravat ; and I have even 
brandished my quill at the office so cutlass-wise, 
that Titbottom ^ has paused in his additions and 
looked at me as if he doubted whether I should 
come out quite square in my petty cash. Yet he 
understands it. Titbottom was born in Nantucket. 

That is the secret of my fondness for the sea ; I 
was born by it. Not more surely do Savoyards 
pine for the mountains, or Cockneys for the sound 
of Bow bells,2 than those who are born within 
sight and sound of the ocean to return to it and 
renew their fealty. In dreams the children of the 
sea hear its voice. I have read in some book of 
travels that certain tribes of Arabs have no name 
for the ocean, and that when they came to the 
shore for the first time, they asked with eager sad- 

1 A fellow bookkeeper. 

2 The bells of the Church of St. Mary le Bow on Clieapside 
London, 



120 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

ness, as if penetrated by the conviction of a supe- 
rior beauty, '' What, is that desert of water more 
beautiful than the land ? " 

And in the translations of German stories which 
Adoniram and the other children read, and into 
which I occasionally look in the evening when they 
are gone to bed — for I like to know what interests 
my children — I find that the Germans, who do 
not live near the sea, love the fairy lore of water, 
and tell the sweet stories of Undine and Melusina, 
as if they had especial charm for them, because 
their country is inland. 

We who know the sea have less fairy feeling 
about it, but our realities are romance. My ear- 
liest remembrances^ are of a long range of old 
half -dilapidated stores ; red brick stores with 
steep wooden roofs, and stone window frames and 
door frames, which stood upon docks built as if 
for immense trade with all quarters of the globe. 

Generally they were only a few sloops moored 
to the tremendous posts, which I fancied could 
easily hold fast a Spanish Armada in a tropical 
hurricane. But sometimes a great ship, an East 
Indiaman, with rusty, seamed, blistered sides, and 
dingy sails, came slowly moving up the harbor, 
with an air of indolent self-importance and con- 
sciousness of superiority, which inspired me with 
profound respect. If the ship had ever chanced to 
run down a rowboat, or a sloop, or any specimen 

1 Curtis was born in Providence, Rhode Island. 



AMEBIC AN ESSAYS 121 

of smaller craft, I should only have wondered at 
the temerity of any floating thing in crossing the 
path of such supreme majesty. The ship was 
leisurely chained and cabled to the old dock, and 
then came the disemboweling. 

How the stately monster had been fattening 
upon foreign spoils ! How it had gorged itself 
(such galleons did never seem to me of the femi- 
nine gender) with the luscious treasures of the 
tropics ! It had lain its lazy length along the 
shores of China, and sucked in whole flowery har- 
vests of tea. The Brazilian sun flashed through 
the strong wicker prisons, bursting with bananas 
and nectarean fruits that eschew the temperate 
zone. Steams of camphor, of sandal wood, arose 
from the hold. Sailors chanting cabalistic strains, 
that had to my ear a shrill and monotonous pathos, 
like the uniform rising and falling of an autumn 
wind, turned cranks that lifted the bales, and 
boxes, and crates, and swung them ashore. 

But to my mind, the spell of their singing raised 
the fragrant freight, and not the crank. Mada- 
gascar and Ceylon appeared at the mystic bidding 
of the song. The placid sunshine of the docks 
was perfumed with India. The universal calm of 
southern seas poured from the bosom of the ship 
over the quiet, decaying old northern port. 

Long after the confusion of unloading was over, 
and the ship lay as if all voyages were ended, I 
dared to creep timorously along the edge of the 



122 HAWTHOBNE CLASSICS 

dock, and at great risk of falling in the black 
water of its huge shadow, I placed my hand upon 
the hot hulk, and so established a mystic and ex- 
quisite connection with Pacific islands, with palm 
groves and all the passionate beauties they em- 
bower ; with jungles, Bengal tigers, pepper, and 
the crushed feet of Chinese fairies. I touched 
Asia, the Cape of Good Hope, and the Happy 
Islands. I would not believe that the heat 1 felt 
w^as of our northern sun ; to my finer sympathy it 
burned with equatorial fervors. 

The freight was piled in the old stores. I be- 
lieve that many of them remain, but they have lost 
their character. When I knew them, not only was 
I younger, but partial decay had overtaken the 
town ; at least the bulk of its India trade had 
shifted to New York and Boston. But the appli- 
ances remained. There was no throng of busy 
traffickers, and after school, in the afternoon, I 
strolled by and gazed into the solemn interiors. 

Silence reigned within, — silence, dimness, and 
piles of foreign treasure. Vast coils of cable, like 
tame boa-constrictors, served as seats for men with 
large stomachs and heavy watch seals, and nankeen 
trousers, who sat looking out of the door toward 
the ships, with little other sign of life than an occa- 
sional low talking, as if in their sleep. Huge hogs- 
heads perspiring brown sugar and oozing slow 
molasses, as if nothing tropical could keep within 
bounds, but must continually expand, and exude, 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 123 

and overflow, stood against the walls, and had an 
architectural significance, for they darkly re- 
minded me of Egyptian prints, and in the dusk- 
iness of the low-vaulted store seemed cyclopean 
columns incomplete. Strange festoons and heaps 
of bags, square piles of square boxes cased in mats, 
bales of airy summer stuffs, which, even in winter, 
scoffed at cold, and shamed it by audacious assump- 
tion of eternal sun ; little specimen boxes of pre- 
cious dyes that even now shine through my 
memory, like old Venetian schools unpainted, — 
these were all there in rich confusion. 

The stores had a twilight of dimness, the air 
was spicy with mingled odors. I liked to look 
suddenly in from the glare of sunlight outside, 
and then the cool sweet dimness was like the pal- 
pable breath of the far-off island groves ; and if 
only some parrot or macaw hung within, would 
flaunt with glistening plumage in his cage, and as 
the gay hue flashed in a chance sunbeam, call in 
his hard, shrill voice, as if thrusting sharp sounds 
upon a glistening wire from out that grateful 
gloom, then *the enchantment was complete, and, 
without moving, I was circumnavigating the 
globe. 

From the old stores and the docks slowly crum- 
bling, touched, I know not why or how, by the 
pensive air of past prosperity, I rambled out of 
town on those well-remembered afternoons, to the 
fields that lay upon hillsides over the harbor, and 



124 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

there sat, looking out to sea, fancying some dis- 
tant sail proceeding to the glorious ends of the 
earth, to be my type and image, who would so sail, 
stately and successful, to all the glorious ports of 
the Future. Going home, I returned by the 
stores, which black porters were closing. But I 
stood long looking in, saturating my imagination, 
and as it appeared, my clothes, with the spicy sug- 
gestion. For when I reached home, my thrifty 
mother — another Prue — came snuffing and smell- 
ing about me. 

" Why ! my son (snuffs snuff')^ where have you 
been ? {snuffs snuff). Has the baker been making 
(^snuff} gingerbread ? You smell as if you'd been 
in {snuffs ^^^j^) ^ bag of cinnamon." 

"I've only been on the wharves, mother." 

" Well, my dear, I hope you haven't stuck up 
your clothes with molasses. Wharves are dirty 
places, and dangerous. You must take care of 
yourself, my son. Really this smell is Qsnuff^ 
snuff) very strong." 

But I departed from the maternal presence, 
proud and happy. I was aromatic. I bore about 
me the true foreign air. Whoever smelled me 
smelled distant countries. I liad nutmeg, spices, 
cinnamon, and cloves, without the jolly red nose. 
I pleased myself with being the representative of 
the Indies. I was in good odor with myself and 
all the world. 

I do not know how it is, but surely nature makes 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 125 

kindly provision. An imagination so easily ex- 
cited as mine could not have escaped disappoint- 
ment if it had had ample opportunity and 
experience of the lands it so longed to see. 
Therefore, although I made the India voyage, 
I have never been a traveler, and saving the little 
time I was ashore in India, I did not lose the 
sense of novelty and romance which the first sight 
of foreign lands inspires. 

That little time was all my foreign travel. I 
am glad of it. I see now that I should never 
have found the country from which the East 
Indiaman of my early days arrived. The palm 
groves do not grow with which that hand laid 
upon the ship placed me in magic connection. 
As for the lovely Indian maid whom the palmy 
arches bowered, she has long since clasped some 
native lover to her bosom, and, ripened into mild 
maternity, how should I know her now ? 

"You would find her quite as easily now as 
then," says my Prue, when I speak of it. 

She is right again, as usual, that precious 
woman; and it is therefore I feel that if the 
chances of life have moored me fast to a book- 
keeper's desk, they have left all the lands I longed 
to see fairer and fresher in my mind than they 
could ever be in my memory. Upon my only 
voyage I used to climb into the top and search the 
horizon for the shore. But now in a moment of 
calm thought I see a more Indian India than ever 



126 ' HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

mariner discerned, and do not envy the youths 
who go there and make fortunes, who w^ear grass- 
cloth jackets, drink iced beer, and eat curry ; 
whose minds fall asleep, and whose bodies have 
liver complaints. 

Unseen by me forever, nor ever regretted, shall 
wave the Egyptian palms and the Italian pines. 
Untrodden by me, the Forum shall still echo with 
the footfall of imperial Rome, and the Parthenon, 
unrifled of its marbles, look, perfect, across the 
Egean blue. 

My young friends return from their foreign 
tours elate with the smiles of a nameless Italian 
or Parisian belle. I know not such cheap de- 
lights; I am a suitor of Vittoria Colonna; I 
walk with Tasso along the terraced garden of the 
Villa d'Este, and look to see Beatrice smiling 
down the rich gloom of the cypress shade. You 
stayed at the Hotel Europa, in Venice, at Danielli's, 
or the Leone bianco; I am the guest of Marino 
Faliero,^ and I whisper to his wife as we climb the 
giant staircase in the summer moon-light : — 

*' Ah ! senza amare 
Andare sul mare, 
Col sposa del mare, 
Non puo consolare." 2 

It is for the same reason that I did not care to 
dine with you and Aurelia, that I am content not 

1 Doge of Venice, 1354. 

2 " Ah to go upon the sea without love, cannot delight, even with 
the bride of the sea." 



AMEBIC AN ESSAYS 127 

to stand in St. Peter's. Alas ! if I could see the 
end of it, it would not be St. Peter's. For those 
of us whom Nature means to keep at home, she 
provides entertainment. One man goes four thou- 
sand miles to Italy, and does not see it, he is so 
short-sighted. Another is so far-sighted that he 
stays in his room and sees more than Italy. 

But for this very reason that it washes the 
shores of my possible Europe and Asia, the sea 
draws me constantly to itself. Before I came to 
New York, while I was still a clerk in Boston, 
courting Prue, and living out of town, I never 
knew of a ship sailing for India or even for 
England and France, but I went up to the State 
House cupola or to the observatory on some 
friend's house in Roxbury, where I could not be 
interrupted, and there watched the departure. 

The sails hung ready ; the ship lay in the 
stream ; busy little boats and puffing steamers 
darted about it, clung to its sides, paddled away 
from it, or led the way to sea, as minnows 
might pilot a whale. The anchor was slowly 
swung at the bow; I could not hear the sailors' 
song ; but I knew they were singing. I could not 
see the parting friends, but I knew farewells were 
spoken. I did not share the confusion, although 
I knew what bustle there was, what hurry, what 
shouting, what creaking, what fall of ropes and 
iron, what sharp oaths, low laughs, whispers, sobs. 
But I was cool, high, separate. To me it was 



128 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

" A painted ship 
Upon a painted ocean." 

The sails were shaken out, and the ship began 
to move. It was a fair breeze, perhaps, and no 
steamer was needed to tow her away. She re- 
ceded down the bay. Friends turned back — I 
could not see them — and waved their hands, 
and wiped their eyes, and went home to dinner. 
Farther and farther from the ships at anchor, 
the lessening vessel became single and solitary 
upon the water. The sun sank in the west ; 
but 1 watched her still. Every flash of her 
sails, as she tacked and turned, thrilled my 
heart. 

Yet Prue was not on board. I had never seen 
one of the passengers or the crew. I did not 
know the consignees, nor the name of the vessel. 
I had shipped no adventure, nor risked any insur- 
ance, nor made any bet, but my eyes clung to her 
as Ariadne's to the fading sail of Theseus. The 
ship was freighted with more than appeared upon 
her papers, yet she was not a smuggler. She bore 
all there was of that nameless lading, yet the next 
ship would carry as much. She was freighted 
with fancy. My hopes, and wishes, and vague 
desires, were all on board. It seemed to me a 
treasure not less rich than that which filled the 
East Indiaman at the old dock in my boyhood. 

When, at length, the ship was a sparkle upon 
the horizon, I waved my hand in last farewell, I 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 129 

strained my eyes for a last glimpse. My mind 
had gone to sea, and had left noise behind. But 
now I heard again the multitudinous murmur of 
the city, and went down rapidly, and threaded the 
short, narrow streets to the office. Yet, believe 
it, every dream of that day, as I watched the 
vessel, was written at night to Prue. She knew 
my heart had not sailed away. 

Those days are long past now, but still I walk 
upon the Battery and look toward the Narrows, 
and know that beyond them, separated only by 
the sea, are many of whom I would so gladly 
know and so rarely hear. The sea rolls between 
us like the lapse of dusky ages. They trusted 
themselves to it, and it bore them away far and 
far as if into the past. Last night I read of 
Antony, but I have not heard from Christopher 
these many months, and by so much farther 
away is he, so much older and more remote, 
than Antony. As for William, he is as vague 
as any of the shepherd kings of ante-Pharaonic 
dynasties. 

It is the sea that has done it, it has carried 
them off and put them away upon its other side. 
It is fortunate the sea did not put them upon its 
underside. Are they hale and happy still? Is 
their hair gray, and have they mustachios ? Or 
have they taken to wigs and crutches ? Are they 
popes or cardinals yet? Do they feast with Lu- 
crezia Borgia, or preach red republicanism to the 

K 



130 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

Council of Ten? Do they sing, "Behold how 
brightly breaks the morning" with Masaniello? 
Do they laugh at Ulysses and skip ashore to the 
Sirens ? Has Mesrour, chief of the Eunuchs, caught 
them with Zobeide in the Caliph's garden, or have 
they made cheesecakes without pepper ? Friends 
of my youth, where in your wanderings have you 
tasted the blissful Lotus, that you neither come 
nor send us tidings ? 

Across the sea also came idle rumors, as false 
reports steal into history and defile fair fame. 
Was it longer ago than yesterday that I walked 
with my cousin, then recently a widow, and talked 
with her of the countries to which she meant to 
sail? She was young, and dark-eyed, and wore 
great hoops of gold, barbaric gold, in her ears. 
The hope of Italy, the thought of living there, 
had risen like a dawn in the darkness of her 
mind. I talked and listened by rapid turns. 

Was it longer ago than yesterday that she told 
me of her splendid plans, how palaces tapestried 
with gorgeous paintings should be cheaply hired, 
and the best of teachers lead her children to the 
completest and most various knowledge; how — 
and with her slender pittance ! she should have 
a box at the opera, and a carriage, and liveried 
servants, and in perfect health and youth, lead 
a perfect life in a perfect climate? 

And now what do I hear? Why does a tear 
sometimes drop so audibly upon my paper, that 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 131 

Titbottom looks across with a sort of mild rebuk- 
ing glance of inquiry, whether it is kind to let 
even a single tear fall, when an ocean of tears is 
pent up in hearts that would burst and overflow 
if but one drop should force its way out? Why 
across the sea come faint gusty stories, like low 
voices in the wind, of a cloistered garden and 
sunny seclusion — and a life of unknown and un- 
explained luxury. What is this picture of a pale 
face showered with streaming black hair, and large 
sad eyes looking upon lovely and noble children 
playing in the sunshine — and a brow pained with 
thought straining into their destiny ? Who is this 
figure, a man tall and comely, with melting eyes 
and graceful motion, who comes and goes at pleas- 
ure, who is not a husband, yet has the key of the 
cloistered garden ? 

I do not know. They are secrets of the sea. 
The pictures pass before my mind suddenly and 
unawares, and I feel the tears rising that I would 
gladly repress. Titbottom looks at me, then 
stands by the window of the office, and leans his 
brow against the cold iron bars, and looks down 
into the little square paved court. I take my hat 
and steal out of the office for a few minutes, and 
slowly pace the hurrying streets. Meek-eyed 
Alice ! magnificent Maud ! sweet baby Lilian ! 
why does the sea imprison you so far away, when 
will you return, where do you linger ? The water 
laps idly about the docks, — lies calm, or gayly 



132 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

heaves. Why does it bring me doubts and fears 
now, that brought such bounty of beauty in the 
days long gone ? 

I remember that the day when my dark-haired 
cousin, with hoops of barbaric gold in her ears, 
sailed for Italy, was quarter day, and we balanced 
the books at the office. It was nearly noon, and 
in my impatience to be away I had not added my 
columns with sufficient care. The inexorable hand 
of the office clock pointed sternly toward twelve, 
and the remorseless pendulum ticked solemnly to 
noon. 

To a man whose pleasures are not many, and 
rather small, the loss of such an event as saying 
farewell and wishing godspeed to a friend going 
to Europe, is a great loss. It was so to me, espe- 
cially, because there was always more to me, in 
every departure, than the parting and the farewell. 
I was gradually renouncing this pleasure, as I saw 
small prospect of ending before noon, when Tit- 
bottom, after looking at me a moment, came to my 
side of the desk, and said : — 

" I should like to finish that for you." 

I looked at him ; poor Titbottom ! he had no 
friends to wish godspeed upon any journey. I 
quietly wiped my pen, took down my hat, and 
went out. It was in the days of sail packets and 
less regularity, when going to Europe was more of 
an epoch in life. How gayly my cousin stood 
upon the deck and detailed to me her plan ! How 



AMEBIC AN ESSAYS 133 

merrily the children shouted and sang ! How 
long I held my cousin's little hand in mine, and 
gazed into her great eyes, remembering that they 
would see and touch the things that were invisible 
to me forever, but all the more precious and fair ! 
She kissed me — I was younger then — there were 
tears, I remember, and prayers, and promises, a 
waving handkerchief — a fading sail. 
• It was only the other day that I saw another 
parting of the same kind. I was not a principal, 
only a spectator; but so fond am I of sharing, 
afar off, as it were, and unseen, the sympathies of 
human beings, that I cannot avoid often going to 
the dock upon steamer days, and giving myself to 
that pleasant and melancholy observation. There 
is always a crowd, but this day it was almost im- 
possible to advance through the masses of people. 
The eager faces hurried by ; a constant stream 
poured up the gangway into the steamer, and the 
upper deck, to which I gradually made my way, 
was crowded with the passengers and their friends. 
There was one group upon which my eyes first 
fell, and upon which my memory lingers. A 
glance, brilliant as daybreak — a voice, 

" Her voice's music — call it the welPs bubbling, the bird's 
warble," 

a goddess girdled with flowers, and smiling fare- 
well upon a circle of worshipers, to each one of 
whom that gracious ' calmness made the smile 
sweeter, and the farewell more sad — other figures, 



134 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

other flowers, an angel face — all these I saw in 
that group as I was swaj^ed up and down the deck 
by the eager swarm of people. The hour came, 
and I went on shore with the rest. The plank 
was drawn away — the captain raised his hand — 
the huge steamer slowly moved — a cannon was 
fired — the ship was gone. 

The sun sparkled upon the water as they sailed 
away. In five minutes the steamer was as much 
separated from the shore as if it had been at sea a 
thousand years. 

I leaned against a post upon the dock and 
looked around. Ranged upon the edge of the 
wharf stood that band of worshipers, waving 
handkerchiefs and straining their eyes to see the 
last smile of farewell — did any eager selfish eye 
hope to see a tear ? They to whom the handkerchiefs 
were waved stood high upon the stern, holding 
flowers. Over them hung the great flag, raised by 
the gentle wind into the graceful folds of a canopy 
— say rather a gorgeous gonfalon waved over the 
triumphant departure, over that supreme youth, 
and bloom, and beauty, going out across the mys- 
tic ocean to carry a finer charm and more human 
splendor into those realms of my invagination be- 
yond the sea. 

" You will return, O youth and beauty ! " I 
said to my dreaming and foolish self, as I con- 
templated those fair figures, "richer than Alex- 
ander with Indian spoils. All that historic 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 135 

association, that copious civilization, those gran- 
deurs and graces of art, that variety and pictur- 
esqueness of life, will mellow and deepen your 
experience even as time silently touches those 
old pictures into a more persuasive and pathetic 
beauty, and as this increasing summer sheds ever 
softer luster upon the landscape. You will return 
conquerors and not conquered. You will bring 
Europe, even as Aurelian brought Zenobia captive, 
to deck your homeward triumph. I do not wonder 
that these clouds break away, I do not wonder that 
the sun presses out and floods all the air, and land, 
and water, with light that graces with happy omens 
your stately farewell." 

But if my faded face looked after them with 
such earnest and longing emotion, — I, a solitary 
old man, unknown to those fair beings, and stand- 
ing apart from that band of lovers, yet in that 
moment bound more closely to them than they 
knew, — how was it with those whose hearts sailed 
away with that youth and beauty ? I watched 
them closely from behind my post. I knew that 
life had paused with them ; that the world stood 
still. I knew that the long, long summer would 
be only a yearning regret. I knew that each 
asked himself the mournful question, " Is this 
parting typical — this slow, sad, sweet recession ? " 
And I knew that they did not care to ask whether 
they should meet again, nor dare to contemplate 
the chances of the sea. 



136 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

The steamer swept on, she was near Staten 

Island, and a final gun boomed far and low across 

the water. The crowd was dispersing, but the 

little group remained. Was it not all Hood had 

sung ? 

" I saw thee, lovely Inez 
Descend along the shore 
With bands of noble gentlemen, 
And banners waved before ; 
And gentle youths and maidens gay, 
And snowy plumes they wore ; 
It would have been a beauteous dream, 
If it had been no more ! " 

" O youth ! " I said to them without speaking, 
"be it gently said, as it is solemnly thought, 
should they return no more, yet in your memories 
the high hour of your loveliness is forever en- 
shrined. Should they come no more they never 
will be old, nor changed to you. You will wax 
and wane, you will suffer, and struggle, and grow 
old ; but this summer vision will smile, immortal, 
upon your lives, and those fair faces shall shed, 
forever from under that slowly waving flag, hope 
and peace." 

It is so elsewhere ; it is the tenderness of Nature. 
Long, long ago we lost our firstborn, Prue and I. 
Since then, we have grown older and our children 
with us. Change comes, and grief, perhaps, and 
decay. We are happy, our children are obedient 
and gay. But should Prue live until she has lost 
us all, and laid us, gray and weary, in our graves, 



AMEBIC AN ESSAYS 137 

she will have always one babe in her heart. 
Every mother who has lost an infant, has gained 
a child of immortal youth. Can you find comfort 
here, lovers, whose mistress has sailed away ? 

I did not ask the question aloud, I thought it only, 
as I watched the youths, and turned away while 
they still stood gazing. One, I observed, climbed 
a post and waved his black hat before the white- 
washed side of the shed over the dock, whence 
I supposed he would tumble into the water. 
Another had tied a handkerchief to the end of a 
somewhat baggy umbrella, and in the eagerness of 
gazing, had forgotten to wave it, so that it hung 
mournfully down, as if overpowered with grief it 
could not express. The entranced youth still 
held the umbrella aloft. It seemed to me as if he 
had struck his flag ; or as if one of my cravats 
were airing in that sunlight. A negro carter was 
joking with an apple-woman at the entrance of 
the dock. The steamer was out of sight. 

I found that I was belated and hurried back to 
mj'' desk. Alas ! poor lovers ; 1 wonder if they 
are watching still ? Has he fallen exhausted from 
the post into the water? Is that handkerchief, 
bleached and rent, still pendant upon that some- 
what baggy umbrella ? 

"Youth and beauty went to Europe to-day," 
said I to Prue, as I stirred my tea at evening. 

As I spoke, our youngest daughter brought me 
the sugar. She is just eighteen, and her name 



138 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

should be Hebe. I took a lump of sugar and 
looked at her. She had never seemed so lovely, 
and as I dropped the lump in my cup, I kissed her. 
I glanced at Prue as I did so. The dear woman 
smiled, but did not answer my exclamation. 

Thus without traveling, I travel, and share the 
emotions of those I do not know. But sometimes 
the old longing comes over me as in the days when 
I timidly touched the huge East Indiaman, and 
magnetically sailed round the world. 

It was but a few days after the lovers and I 
waved farewell to the steamer, and while the 
lovely figures standing under the great gonfalon 
were as vivid in my mind as ever, that a day of 
premature sunny sadness, like those of the Indian 
summer, drew me away from the office early in 
the afternoon ; for fortunately it is our dull sea- 
son now, and even Titbottom sometimes leaves 
the office by five o'clock. Although why he should 
leave it, or where he goes, or what he does, I do 
not well know. Before I knew him, I used some- 
times to meet him with a man whom I was after- 
ward told was Bartleby, the scrivener. Even then 
it seemed to me that they rather clubbed their 
loneliness than made society for each other. Re- 
cently I have not seen Bartleby ; but Titbottom 
seems no more solitary because he is alone. 

I strolled into the Battery as I sauntered about. 
Staten Island looked so alluring, tender-hued with 
summer and melting in the haze, that I resolved 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 139 

to indulge myself in a pleasure-trip. It was a 
little selfish, perhaps, to go alone, but I looked at 
my watch, and saw that if I should hurry home 
for Prue the trip would be lost ; then I should be 
disappointed, and she would be grieved. 

Ought I not rather (I like to begin questions, 
which I am going to answer affirmatively, with 
ought^ to take the trip and recount my adventures 
to Prue upon my return, whereby I should actu- 
ally enjoy the excursion and the pleasure of telling 
her ; while she would enjoy my, story and be glad 
that I was pleased? Ought I willfully to deprive 
us both of this various enjoyment by aiming at a 
higher, which, in losing, we should lose all? 

Unfortunately, just as I was triumphantly answer- 
ing " Certainly not ! " another question marched 
into my mind, escorted by a very defiant ought, 

" Ought I to go when I have such a debate 
about it?" 

But while I was perplexed, and scoffing at my 
own scruples, the ferry-bell suddenly rang, and 
answered all my questions. Involuntarily I hur- 
ried on board. The boat slipped from the dock. 
I went up on deck to enjoy the view of the city 
from the bay, but just as I sat down, and meant 
to have said " How beautiful ! " I found myself 
asking : — 

" Ought I to have come? " 

Lost in perplexing debate, I saw little of the 
scenery of the bay ; but the remembrance of Prue 



140 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

and the geutle influence of the day plunged me 
into a mood of pensive reverie which nothing 
tended to destroy, until we suddenly arrived at 
the landing. 

As I was stepping ashore, I was greeted by Mr. 
Bourne, who passes the summer on the island, and 
who hospitably asked if I were going his way. 
His way was toward the southern end of the 
island, and I said yes. His pockets were full of 
papers and his brow of wrinkles ; so when we 
reached the point where he should turn off, I 
asked him to let me alight, although he was 
very anxious to carry me wherever I was going. 

"I am only strolling about," I answered, as I 
clambered carefully out of the wagon. 

''Strolling about?" asked he, in a bewildered 
manner ; " do people stroll about, nowadays ? " 

" Sometimes," I answered, smiling, as I pulled 
my trousers down over my boots, for they had 
dragged up, as I stepped out of the wagon, " and 
besides, what can an old bookkeeper do better in 
the dull season than stroll about this pleasant 
island, and watch the ships at sea?" 

Bourne looked at me with his weary eyes. 

"- I'd give five thousand dollars a year for a dull 
season," said he, ''but as for strolling, I've for- 
gotten how." 

As he spoke his eyes wandered dreamily across 
the fields and woods, and were fastened upon the 
distant sails. 



AMEBIC AN ESSAYS 141 

" It is pleasant," he said musingly, and fell into 
silence. But I had no time to spare, so I wished 
him good-afternoon. 

" I hope your wife is well," said Bourne to me, 
as I turned away. Poor Bourne ! He drove on 
alone in his wagon. 

But I made haste to the most solitary point upon 
the southern shore, and there sat, glad to be so 
near the sea. There was that warm, sympathetic 
silence in the air that gives to Indian summer days 
almost a human tenderness of feeling. A delicate 
haze, that seemed only the kindly air made visible, 
hung over the sea. The water lapped languidly 
among the rocks, and the voices of children, in a 
boat beyond, rang musically, and gradually re- 
ceded, until they were lost in the distance. 

It was some time before I was aware of the out- 
line of a large ship, drawn vaguely upon the mist, 
which I supposed, at first, to be only a kind of 
mirage. But the more steadfastly I gazed, the 
more distinct it became, and I could no longer 
doubt that I saw a stately ship lying at anchor, 
not more than half a mile from the land. 

" It is an extraordinary place to anchor," I said 
to myself, " or can she be ashore ? " 

There were no signs of distress ; the sails were 
carefully clewed up, and there were no sailors in 
the tops nor upon the shrouds. A flag, of which 
I could not see the 'device or the nation, hung 
heavily at the stern, and looked as if it had fallen 



142 ' HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

asleep. My curiosity began to be singularly 
excited. The form of the vessel seemed not to 
be permanent; but within a quarter of an hour, 
I was sure that I had seen half a dozen different 
ships. As I gazed, I saw no more sails nor masts, 
but a long range of oars, flashing like a golden 
fringe, or straight and stiff, like the legs of a sea- 
monster. 

"It is some bloated crab, or lobster, magnified 
by the mist," I said to myself complacently. 

But, at the same moment, there was a concen- 
trated flashing and blazing in one spot among the 
rigging, and it was as if I saw a beautified ram, or, 
more truly, a sheepskin splendid as the Hair of 
Berenice.^ 

" Is that the golden fleece? " I thought. '' But 
surely, Jason and the Argonauts have gone home 
long since. Do people go on gold-fleecing expedi- 
tions now? " I asked myself in perplexity. '' Can 
this be a California steamer? " 

How could I have thought it a steamer? Did I 
not see those sails, " thin and sere " ? Did I not 
feel the melancholy of that solitary bark? It had 
a mystic aura ; a boreal brilliancy shimmered in its 
wake, for it was drifting seaward. A strange fear 
curdled along my veins. That summer sun shone 
cool. The weary, battered ship was gashed, as if 
gnawed by ice. There was terror in the air, as a 
" skinny hand so brown " waved to me from the 

1 One of the constellations. 



AMEBIC AN ESSAYS 143 

deck. I lay as one bewitched. The hand of the 
ancient mariner seemed to be reaching for me, like 
the hand of death. 

Death? Why, as I was inly praying Prue's for- 
giveness for my solitary ramble and consequent 
demise, a glance like the fullness of summer splen- 
dor gushed over me ; the odor of flowers and of 
Eastern gums made all the atmosphere. I breathed 
the Orient, and lay drunk with balm, while that 
strange ship, a golden galley now, with glittering 
draperies festooned with flowers, paced to the 
measured beat of oars along the calm, and Cleo- 
patra smiled alluringly from the great pageant's 
heart. 

Was this a barge for summer waters, this pecul- 
iar ship I saw? It had a ruined dignity, a cum- 
brous grandeur, although its masts were shattered 
and its sails rent. It hung preternaturally still 
upon the sea, as if tormented and exhausted by 
long driving and drifting. I saw no sailors, but a 
great Spanish ensign floated over, and waved, a 
funeral plume. I knew it then. The armada was 
long since scattered ; but, floating far 

" on desolate, rainy seas," 

lost for centuries, and again restored to sight, here 
lay one of the fated ships of Spain. The huge 
galleon seemed to fill all the air, built up against 
the sky, like the gilded ships of Claude Lorraine 
against the sunset. 



144 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

But it fled, for now a black flag fluttered at the 
mast head — a long, low vessel darted swiftly 
where the vast ship lay ; there came a shrill pip- 
ing whistle, the clash of cutlasses, fierce ringing 
oaths, sharp pistol cracks, the thunder of com- 
mand, and over all the gusty yell of a demoniac 
chorus, 

" My name was Robert Kidd, when I sailed." 

— There were no clouds longer, but under a 
serene sky I saw a bark moving with festal pomp, 
thronged with grave senators in flowing robes, 
and one with ducal bonnet in the midst, holding a 
ring. The smooth bark swam upon a sea like that 
of southern latitudes. I saw the Bucentoro and 
the nuptials of Venice and the Adriatic. 

Who were those coming over the side? Who 
crowded the boats and sprang into the water, men 
in old Spanish armor, with plumes and swords, 
and bearing a glittering cross? Who was he 
standing upon the deck with folded arms and 
gazing toward the shore, as lovers on their mis- 
tresses, and martyrs upon heaven? Over what 
distant and tumultuous seas had this small craft 
escaped from other centuries and distant shores? 
What sounds of foreign hymns, forgotten now, 
w:ere these, and what solemnity of debarkation? 
Was this grave form Columbus? 

Yet these were not so Spanish as they seemed 
just now. This group of stern-faced men with 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 145 

higli-peaked hats, who knelt upon the cold deck 
and looked out upon a shore which, I could see 
by their joyless smile of satisfaction, was rough, 
and bare, and forbidding. In that soft afternoon, 
standing in mournful groups upon the small deck, 
why did they seem to me to be seeing the sad 
shores of wintry New England ? That phantom- 
ship could not be the Mayflower ! 

I gazed long upon the shifting illusion. 

" If I should board this ship," I asked myself, 
" where should I go ? whom should I meet ? what 
should I see ? Is not this the vessel that shall 
carry me to my Europe, my foreign countries, my 
impossible India, the Atlantis that I have lost ? " 

As I sat staring at it I could not but wonder 
whether Bourne had seen this sail when he looked 
upon the water ? Does he see ^uch sights every 
day, because he lives here ? Is it not perhaps a 
magic yacht of his ; and does he slip off privately 
after business hours to Venice, and Spain, and 
Egypt, perhaps to El Dorado ? Does he run races 
with Ptolemy Philopater, and Hiero of Syracuse, 
race regattas on fabulous seas ? 

Why not ? He is a rich man, too, and why 
should not a New York merchant do what a Syra- 
cuse tyrant and an Egyptian prince did? Has 
Bourne's yacht those sumptuous chambers, like 
Philopater's galley, of which the greater part was 
made of split cedar, and of Milesian cypress ; and 
has he twenty doors put together with beams of 



146 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

citron-wood, with many ornaments ? Has the roof 
of his cabin a carved golden face, and is his sail 
linen with a purple fringe ? 

" I suppose it is so," I said to myself, as I looked 
wistfully at the ship, which began to glimmer and 
melt in the haze. 

" It certainly is not a fishing smack ? " I asked 
doubtfully. 

No, it must be Bourne's magic yacht ; I was 
sure of it. I could not help laughing at poor old 
Hiero, whose cabins were divided into man}^ rooms, 
with floors composed of mosaic work, of all kinds 
of stones tessellated. And, on this mosaic, the 
whole story of the Iliad was depicted in a mar- 
velous manner. He had gardens " of all sorts of 
most wonderful beauty enriched with all sorts of 
plants, and shadowed by roofs of lead or tiles. 
And, besides this, there were tents roofed with 
boughs of white ivy and of the vine, the roots 
of which derived their moisture from casks full of 
earth, and were watered in the same manner as 
the gardens. There were temples, also, with doors 
of ivory and citron-wood, furnished in the most 
exquisite manner, with pictures and statues, and 
with goblets and vases of every form and shape 
imaginable." 

"- Poor Bourne ! " I said, "J suppose his is finer 
than Hiero's, which is a thousand years old. 
Poor Bourne ! I don't wonder that his eyes are 
weary, and that he would pay so dearly for a day 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 147 

of leisure. Dear me ! is it one of the prices that 
must be paid for wealth, the keeping up a magic 
yacht ? " 

Involuntarily, I had asked the question aloud. 

"The magic yacht is not Bourne's," answered 
a familiar voice. I looked up, and Titbottom 
stood by my side. '' Do you not know that all 
Bourne's money would not buy the yacht ? " asked 
he. " He cannot even see it. And if he could, it 
would be no magic yacht to him, but only a bat- 
tered and solitary hulk." 

The haze blew gently away, as Titbottom spoke, 
and there lay my Spanish galleon, my Bucentoro^ 
my Cleopatra's galley, Columbus' Santa Maria^ 
and the Pilgrim's Mayflower^ an old bleaching 
wreck upon the beacli. 

'' Do you suppose any true love is in vain ? " 
asked Titbottom solemnly, as he stood bare-headed 
and the soft sunset wind played with his few 
hairs. " Could Cleopatra smile upon Antony, and 
the moon upon Endymion, and the sea not love its 
lovers ? " 

The fresh air breathed upon our faces as he 
spoke. I might have sailed in Hiero's ship, or in 
Roman galleys, had I lived centuries ago, and 
been born a nobleman. But would it be so sweet 
a remembrance, that of lying on a marble couch, 
under a golden -faced roof, and within doors of 
citron-wood and ivory, and sailing in that state 
to greet queens who are mummies now, as that of 



148 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

seeing those fair figures standing under tlie great 
gonfalon, themselves as lovely as Egyptian belles, 
and going to see more than Egypt dreamed? 

The yacht was mine, then, and not Bourne's. 
I took Titbottom's arm, and we sauntered toward 
the ferry. What sumptuous sultan was I, with 
this sad vizier ? My languid odalisque, the sea, 
lay at my feet as we advanced, and sparkled all 
over with a sunset smile. Had I trusted myself 
to her arms, to be borne to the realms that I 
shall never see, or sailed long voyages toward 
Cathay, I am not sure I should have brought a 
more precious present to Prue, than the story of 
that afternoon. 

''Ought I to have gone alone ? " I asked her, as 
I ended. 

" I ought not to have gone with you," she 
replied, '' for I had work to do. But how strange 
that you should see such things at Staten Island. 
I never did, Mr. Titbottom," said she, turning to 
my deputy, whom I had asked to tea. 

"Madam," answered Titbottom, with a kind of 
wan and quaint dignity, so that I could not help 
thinking he must have arrived in that stray 
ship from the Spanish armada, " neither did Mr. 
Bourne." 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 149 

TITBOTTOM'S SPECTACLES 

" In my mind's eye, Horatio." 

Hamlet. 

Prue and I do not entertain much ; our means 
forbid it. In truth, other people entertain for us. 
We enjoy that hospitality of which no account is 
made. We see the show, and hear the music, and 
smell the flowers, of great festivities, tasting, as it 
were, the drippings from rich dishes. 

Our own dinner service is remarkably plain, our 
dinners, even on state occasions, are strictly in 
keeping, and almost our only guest is Titbottom. 
I buy a handful of roses as I come up from the 
office, perhaps, and Prue arranges them so prettily 
in a glass dish for the center of the table, that, 
even when I have hurried out to see Aurelia step 
into her carriage to go out to dine, I have thought 
that the bouquet she carried was not more beauti- 
ful because it was more costly. 

I grant that it was more harmonious with her 
superb beauty and her rich attire. And I have no 
doubt that if Aurelia knew the old man whom she 
must have seen so often watching her, and his 
wife, who ornaments her sex with as much sweet- 
ness, although with less splendor, than Aurelia 
herself, she would also acknowledge that the nose- 
gay of roses was as fine and fit upon their table, 
as her own sumptuous bouquet is for herself. I 



150 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

have so much faith in the perception of that lovely 
lady. 

It is my habit — I hope I may say, my nature 
— to believe the best of people, rather than the 
worst. If I thought that all this sparkling set- 
ting of beauty, — this fine fashion, — these blazing 
jewels, and lustrous silks, and airy gauzes, embel- 
lished with gold-threaded embroidery and wrought 
in a thousand exquisite elaborations, so that I can- 
not see one of those lovely girls pass me by, with- 
out thanking God for the vision, — if I thought 
that this was all, and that, underneath her lace 
flounces and diamond bracelets, Aurelia was a sul- 
len, selfish woman, then I should turn sadly home- 
ward, for I should see that her jewels were flashing 
scorn upon tlie object they adorned, that her laces 
were of a more exquisite loveliness than the 
woman whom they merely touched with a super- 
ficial grace. It would be like a gayly decorated 
mausoleum, — bright to see, but silent and dark 
within. 

" Great excellences, my dear Prue," I sometimes 
allow myself to say, " lie concealed in the depths 
of character, like pearls at the bottom of the sea. 
Under the laughing, glancing surface, how little 
they are suspected ! Perhaps love is nothing else 
than the sight of them by one person. Hence 
every man's mistress is apt to be an enigma to 
everybody else. 

'' I have no doubt that when Aurelia is engaged, 



AMEBIC AN ESSAYS 151 

people will say she is a most admirable girl, cer- 
tainly, but they cannot understand why any man 
should be in love with her. As if it were at all 
necessary that they should ! And her lover, like 
a boy who finds a pearl in the public street, and 
wonders as much that others did not see it as that 
he did, will tremble until he knows his passion is 
returned ; feeling, of course, that the whole world 
must be in love with this paragon, who cannot 
possibly smile upon anything so unworthy as he. 

'^I hope, therefore, my dear Mrs. Prue," I con- 
tinue, and my wife looks up, with pleased pride, 
from her work, as if I were such an irresistible 
humorist, " you will allow me to believe that the 
depth may be calm, although the surface is danc- 
ing. If you tell me that Aurelia is but a giddy 
girl, I shall believe that you think so. But I shall 
know, all the while, what profound dignity, and 
sweetness, and peace, lie at the foundation of her 
character." 

I say such things to Titbottom, during the dull 
season at the office. And I have known him some- 
times to reply, with a kind of dry, sad humor, not 
as if he enjoyed the joke, but as if the joke must 
be made, that he saw no reason why I should be 
dull because the season was so. 

" And what do I know of Aurelia, or any other 
girl ? " he says to me with that abstracted air, " I, 
whose Aurelias were of another century, and an- 
other zone." 



152 HAWTHOBNE CLASSICS 

Then he falls into a silence which it seems quite 
profane to interrupt. But as we sit upon our high 
stools, at the desk, opposite each other, I leaning 
upon my elbows, and looking at him, he, with 
sidelong face, glancing out of the window, as if it 
commanded a boundless landscape, instead of a 
dim, dingy office court, I cannot refrain from 
saying : 

" Well ! " 

He turns slowly, and I go chatting on, — a little 
too loquacious, perhaps, about those young girls. 
But I know that Titbottom regards such an excess 
as venial, for his sadness is so sweet that you could 
believe it the reflection of a smile from long, long 
years ago. 

One day, after I had been talking for a long 
time, and we had put up our books, and were pre- 
paring to leave, he stood for some time by the 
window, gazing with a drooping intentness, as if 
he really saw something more than the dark court, 
and said slowly : — 

" Perhaps you would have different impressions 
of things, if you saw them through my spectacles." 

There was no change in his expression. He 
still looked from the window, and I said : — 

"Titbottom, I did not know that you used 
glasses. I have never seen you wearing spec- 
tacles." 

" No, I don't often wear them. I am not very 
fond of looking through them. But sometimes an 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 153 

irresistible necessity compels me to put them on, 
and I cannot help seeing." 

Titbottom sighed. 

" Is it so grievous a fate to see ? " inquired I. 

" Yes ; through my spectacles," he said, turning 
slowly, and looking at me with wan solemnity. 

It grew dark as we stood in the office talking, 
and, taking our hats, we went out together. The 
narrow street of business was deserted. The heavy 
iron shutters were gloomily closed over the win- 
dows. From one or two offices struggled the dim 
gleam of an early candle, by whose light some per- 
plexed accountant sat belated, and hunting for his 
error. A careless clerk passed, whistling. But 
the great tide of life had ebbed. We heard its 
roar far away, and the sound stole into that silent 
street like the murmur of the ocean into an inland 
dell. 

" You will come and dine with us, Titbottom ? " 

He assented by continuing to walk with me, and 
I think we were both glad when we reached the 
house, and Prue came to meet us, saying : — 

'' Do you know, I hoped you would bring Mr. 
Titbottom to dine." 

Titbottom smiled gently, and answered : — 

'' He might have brought his spectacles with 
him, and have been a happier man for it." 

Prue looked a little puzzled. 

" My dear," I said; " you must know that our 
friend, Mr. Titbottom, is the happy possessor of a 



154 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

pair of wonderful spectacles. I have never seen 
them, indeed ; and, from what he says, I should 
be rather afraid of being seen by them. Most 
short-sighted persons are very glad to have the 
help of glasses ; but Mr. Titbottom seems to find 
very little pleasure in his." 

"It is because they make him too far-sighted, 
perhaps," interrupted Prue, quietly, as she took 
the silver soup-ladle from the sideboard. 

We sipped our wine after dinner, and Prue took 
her work. Can a man be too far-sighted ? I did 
not ask the question aloud. The very tone in which 
Prue had spoken convinced me that he might. 

" At least," I said, " Mr. Titbottom will not 
refuse to tell us the history of his mysterious 
spectacles. I have known plenty of magic in 
eyes (and I glanced at the tender blue eyes of 
Prue), but I have not heard of any enchanted 
glasses." 

" Yet you must have seen the glass in which 
your Avife looks every morning, and, I take it, 
that glass must be daily enchanted," said Titbot- 
tom, with a bow of quaint respect to my wife. 

I do not think I have seen such a blush upon 
Prue's cheek since — well, since a great many 
years ago. 

'' I will gladly tell you the history of my spec- 
tacles," began Titbottom. '' It is very simple ; 
and I am not at all sure that a great many other 
people have not a pair of the same kind. I have 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 155 

never, indeed, heard of them by the gross, like 
those of our young friend Moses, the son of the 
Vicar of Wakefield. In fact, I think a gross 
would be quite enough to supply the world. It 
is a kind of article for which the demand does not 
increase with use. If we should all wear spec- 
tacles like mine, we should never smile any more. 
Or — I am not quite sure — we should all be very 
happy." 

'' A very important difference," said Prue, count- 
ing her stitches. 

" You know my grandfather Titbottom was a 
West Indian. A large proprietor, and an easy 
man, he basked in the tropical sun, leading his 
quiet, luxurious life. He lived much alone, and 
was what people called eccentric ^- by which I un- 
derstand that he was very much himself, and, refus- 
ing the influence of other people, they had their 
revenges, and called him names. It is a habit not 
exclusively tropical. I think I have seen the same 
thing even in this city. 

" But he was greatly beloved — my bland and 
bountiful grandfather. He was so large-hearted 
and open-handed. He was so friendly, and thought- 
ful, and genial that even his jokes had the air of 
graceful benedictions. He did not seem to grow 
old, and he was one of those who never appear to 
have been very young. He flourished in a peren- 
nial maturity, an immortal middle age. 

'' My grandfatlier lived upon one of the small 



156 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 



islands — St. Kitt's perha^ps — and his domain 
extended to the sea. His house, a rambling 
West Indian mansion, was surrounded with deep, 
spacious piazzas, covered with luxurious lounges, 
among which one capacious chair was his peculiar 
seat. They tell me, he used sometimes to sit 
there for the whole day, his great, soft, brown 
eyes fastened upon the sea, watching the specks 
of sails that flashed upon the horizon, while the 
evanescent expressions chased each other over his 
placid face as if it reflected the calm and changing 
sea before him. 

" His morning costume was an ample dressing- 
gown of gorgeously flowered silk, and his morning 
was very apt to last all day. He rarely read ; but 
he would pace the great piazza for hours, with his 
hands buried in the pockets of his dressing-gown, 
and an air of sweet reverie, which any book must 
be a very entertaining one to produce. 

" Society, of course, he saw little. There was 
some slight apprehension that, if he were bidden 
to social entertainments, he might forget his coat, 
or arrive without some other essential part of his 
dress ; and there is a sly tradition in the Titbottom 
family that once, having been invited to a ball in 
honor of a new governor of the island, my grand- 
father Titbottom sauntered into the hall toward 
midnight wrapped in the gorgeous flowers of his 
dressing-gown, and with his hands buried in the 
pockets, as usual. There was great excitement 



^ 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 157 

among the guests, and immense deprecation of 
gubernatorial ire. Fortunately, it happened that 
the governor and my grandfather were old friends, 
and there was no offense. But, as they were con- 
versing together, one of the distressed managers 
cast indignant glances at the brilliant costume of 
my grandfather, who summoned him, and asked 
courteously : — 

'^' Did you invite me, or my coat ? ' 

" ' You in a proper coat,' replied the manager. 

'^ The governor smiled approvingly, and looked 
at my grandfather. 

" ' My friend,' said he to the manager, ' I beg 
your pardon, I forgot.' 

" The next day, my grandfather was seen prom- 
enading in full ball dress along the streets of the 
little town. 

" ' They ought to know,' said he, ' that I have a 
proper coat, and that not contempt, nor poverty, 
but f orgetf ulness, sent me to a ball in my dressing- 
gown.' 

" He did not much frequent social festivals after 
this failure, but he always told the story with sat- 
isfaction and a quiet smile. 

" To a stranger, life upon those little islands is 
uniform even to weariness. But the old native 
dons, like my grandfather, ripen in the prolonged 
sunshine, like the turtle upon the Bahama banks, 
nor know of existenbe more desirable. Life in 
the tropics I take to be a placid torpidity. 



158 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

"• During the long, warm mornings of nearly 
half a century, my grandfather Titbottom had sat 
in his dressing-gown, and gazed at the sea. But 
one calm June day, as he slowly paced the piazza 
after breakfast, his dreamy glance was arrested by 
a little vessel, evidently nearing the shore. He 
called for his spyglass, and, surveying the craft, 
saw that she came from the neighboring island. 
She glided smoothly, slowly, over the summer sea. 
The warm morning air was sweet with perfumes, 
and silent with heat. The sea sparkled languidly, 
and the brilliant blue sky hung cloudlessly over. 
Scores of little island vessels had my grandfather 
seen coming over the horizon, and cast anchor in 
the port. Hundreds of summer mornings had the 
white sails flashed and faded, like vague faces 
through forgotten dreams. But this time he laid 
down the spyglass, and leaned against a column of 
the piazza, and watched the vessel with an intent- 
ness that he could not explain. She came nearer 
and nearer, a graceful specter in the dazzling 
morning. 

" ' Decidedly, I must step down and see about 
that vessel,' said my grandfather Titbottom. 

" He gathered his ample dressing gown about 
him, and stepped from the piazza, with no other 
protection from the sun than the little smoking- 
cap upon his head. His face wore a calm, beam- 
ing smile, as if he loved the whole world. He 
was not an old man ; but there was almost a patri- 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 159 

archal pathos in his expression, as he sauntered 
along in the sunshine toward the shore. A 
group of idle gazers Avas collected, to watch the 
arrival. The little vessel furled her sails, and 
drifted slowly landward, and, as she was of very 
light draft, she came close to the shelving shore. 
A long plank was put out from her side, and the 
debarkation commenced. 

" My grandfather Titbottom stood looking on, 
to see the passengers as they passed. There were 
but a few of them, and mostly traders from the 
neighboring island. But suddenly the face of a 
young girl appeared over the side of the vessel, 
and she stepped upon the plank to descend. My 
grandfather Titbottom instantly advanced, and, 
moving briskly, reached the top of the plank at 
the same moment, and with the gold tassel of his 
cap flashing in the sun, and one hand in the pocket 
of his dressing-gown, with the other he handed the 
young lady carefully down the plank. That young 
lady was afterward my grandmother Titbottom. 

"For, over the gleaming sea which he had 
watched so long, and which seemed thus to reward 
his patient gaze, came his bride that sunny morn- 
ing. 

" ' Of course, we are happy,' he used to say to 
her, after they were married : ' for you are the 
gift of the sun I have loved so long and so well.' 
And my grandfather Titbottom would lay his 
liand so tenderly upon the golden hair of his 



160 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

young bride, that you could fancy him a devout 
Parsee,! caressing sunbeams. 

" There were endless festivities upon occasion 
of the marriage ; and my grandfather did not go 
to one of them in his dressing-gown. The gentle 
sweetness of his wife melted every heart into love 
and sympathy. He was much older than she, 
without doubt. But age, as he used to say with a 
smile of immortal youth, is a matter of feeling, 
not of years. 

'' And if, sometimes, as she sat by his side on 
the piazza, her fancy looked through her eyes 
upon that summer sea, and saw a younger lover, 
perhaps some one of those graceful and glowing 
heroes who occupy the foreground of all young 
maidens' visions by the sea, yet she could not find 
one more generous and gracious, nor fancy one 
more worthy and loving, than my grandfather 
Titbottom. 

" And if, in the moonlit midnight, while he lay 
calmly sleeping, she leaned out of the window, and 
sank into vague reveries of sweet possibility, and 
watched the gleaming path of the moonlight upon 
the water, until the dawn glided over it, — - it was 
only that mood of nameless regret and longing, 
which underlies all human happiness ; or it was 
the vision of that life of cities and the world, 
which she had never seen, but of which she had 
often read, and which looked very fair and allur- 

1 Because the Parsees are Sun-worshipers. 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 161 

ing across the sea, to a girlish imagination, which 
knew that it should never see that reality. 

" These West Indian years were the great days 
of the family," said Titbottom, with an air of 
majestic and regal regret, pausing, and musing, 
in our little parlor, like a late Stuart ^ in exile, 
remembering England. 

Prue raised her eyes from her work, and looked 
at him with subdued admiration ; for I have 
observed that, like the rest of her sex, she has a 
singular sympathy with the representative of a 
reduced family. 

Perhaps it is their finer perception, which leads 
these tender-hearted women to recognize the divine 
right of social superiority so much more readily 
than we ; and yet, much as Titbottom was en- 
hanced in my wife's admiration by the discovery 
that his dusky sadness of nature and expression 
was, as it were, the expiring gleam and late twi- 
light of ancestral splendors, I doubt if Mr. Bourne 
would have preferred him for bookkeeper a mo- 
ment sooner upon that account. In truth, I have 
observed, down town, that the fact of your ances- 
tors doing nothing is not considered good proof 
that you can do anything. 

But Prue and her sex regard sentiment more 
than action, and I understand easily enough why 
she is never tired of hearing me read of Prince 

^ Like the Henry IX. of p. 201, elder brother of the Prince Charlie 
of p. 202. 

ai 



162 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

Charlie. If Titbottom had been only a little 
younger, a little liandsomer, a little more gallantly 
dressed — in fact a little more of a Prince Charlie, 
I am sure her eyes would not have fallen again 
upon her work so tranquilly, as he resumed his 
storJ^ 

" I can remember my grandfather Titbottom, 
although I was a very young child, and he was a 
very old man. My young mother and my young 
grandmother are very distinct figures in my mem- 
ory, ministering to the old gentleman, wrapped in 
his dressing-gown, and seated upon the piazza. I 
remember his white hair, and his calm smile, and 
how, not long before he died, he called me to him, 
and laying his hand upon my head said to me : — 

" ' My child, the world is not this great sunny 
piazza, nor life the fairy stories which the women 
tell you here, as you sit in their laps. I shall 
soon be gone, but I want to leave with you some 
memento of my love for you, and I know of noth- 
ing more valuable than these spectacles, which 
your grandmother brought from her native island, 
when she arrived here one fine summer morning, 
long ago. I cannot tell whether, when you grow 
older, you will regard them as a gift of the greatest 
value, or as something you had been happier never 
to have possessed.' 

'' ' But, grandpapa, I am not short-sighted.' 

" ' My son, are you not human ? ' said the old 
gentleman ; and how shall I ever forget the 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 163 

thoughtful sadness with which, at the same time, 
he handed me the spectacles. 

" Instinctively I put them on, and looked at my 
grandfather. But I saw no grandfather, no piazza, 
no flowered dressing-gown ; I saw only a luxuri- 
ant palm tree, waving broadly over a tranquil 
landscape ; pleasant homes clustered around it ; 
gardens teeming with fruit and flowers ; flocks 
quietly feeding ; birds wheeling and chirping. I 
heard children's voices, and the low lullaby of 
happy mothers. The sound of cheerful singing 
came wafted from distant fields upon the light 
breeze. Golden harvests glistened out of sight, 
and I caught their rustling whispers of prosperity. 
A warm, yellow atmosphere bathed the whole. 

" I have seen copies of the landscapes of the 
Italian painter Claude, which seemed to me faint 
reminiscences of that calm and happy vision. But 
all this peace and prosperity seemed to flow from 
the spreading palm as from a fountain. 

" I do not know how long I looked, but I had, 
apparently, no power, as I had no will, to remove 
the spectacles. What a wonderful island must 
Nevis be, thought I, if people carry such pictures 
in their pockets, only by buying a pair of specta- 
cles ! What wonder that my dear grandmother 
Titbottom has lived such a placid life, and has 
blessed us all with her sunny temper, where she 
has lived surrounded 'by such images of peace ! 

" My grandfather died. But still, in the warm 



164 HAWTHOBJSr^ CLASSICS 

morning sunshine upon the piazza, I felt his placid 
presence, and as I crawled into his great chair, 
and drifted on in reverie through the still tropical 
day, it was as if his soft dreamy eye had passed 
into my soul. My grandmother cherished his 
memory with tender regret. A violent passion of 
grief for his loss was no more possible than for the 
pensive decay of the year. 

" We have no portrait of him, but I see always, 
when I remember him, that peaceful and luxuriant 
palm. And I think to have known one good old 
man — one man who, through the chances and 
rubs of a long life, has carried his heart in his 
hand, like a palm branch, waving all discords into 
peace — helps our faith in God, in ourselves, and in 
each other, more than many sermons. I hardly 
know whether to be grateful to my grandfather for 
the spectacles ; and yet when I remember that it 
is to them I owe the pleasant image of him which 
I cherish, I seem to myself sadly ungrateful. 

" Madam," said Titbottom to Prue, solemnly, 
" my memory is a long and gloomy gallery, and 
only remotely, at its further end, do I see the 
glimmer of soft sunshine, and only there are the 
pleasant pictures hung. They seem to me very 
happy along whose gallery the sunlight streams 
to their very feet, striking all the pictured walls 
into unfading splendor." 

Prue had laid her work in her lap, and as Tit- 
bottom paused a moment, and I turned toward 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 165 

her, I found her mild eyes fastened upon my face, 
and glistening with many tears. I knew that the 
tears meant that she felt herself to be one of those 
who seemed to Titbottom very happy. 

"Misfortunes of many kinds came heavily upon 
the family after the head was gone. The great 
house was relinquished. My parents were both 
dead, and my grandmother had entire charge of 
me. But from the moment that I received the 
gift of the spectacles, I could not resist their fasci- 
nation, and I withdrew into myself, and became a 
solitary boy. There were not many companions for 
me of my own age, and they gradually left me, or, 
at least, had not a hearty sympathy with me ; for, 
if they teased me, I pulled out my spectacles and 
surveyed them so seriously that they acquired a 
kind of awe of me, and evidently regarded my 
grandfather's gift as a concealed magical weapon 
which might be dangerously drawn upon them at 
any moment. Whenever, in our games, there 
were quarrels and high words, and I began to feel 
about my dress and to wear a grave look, they all 
took the alarm, and shouted, ' Look out for Tit- 
bottom's spectacles,' and scattered like a flock of 
scared sheep. 

" Nor could I wonder at it. For, at first, before 
they took the alarm, I saw strange sights when I 
looked at them through the glasses. 

" If two were quarreling about a marble or a 
ball, I had only to go behind a tree where I was 



166 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

concealed and look at them leisurely. Then the 
scene changed, and it was no longer a green 
meadow with boys playing, but a spot which I 
did not recognize, and forms that made me shud- 
der, or smile. It was not a big boy bullying a 
little one, but a young wolf with glistening teeth 
and a lamb cowering before him ; or it was a dog 
faithful and famishing — or a star going slowly 
into eclipse — or a rainbow fading — or a flower 
blooming — or a sun rising — or a waning moon. 

" The revelations of the spectacles determined 
my feeling for the boys, and for all whom I saw 
through them. No shyness, nor awkwardness, 
nor silence, could separate me from those who 
looked lovely as lilies to my illuminated eyes. 
But the vision made me afraid. If I felt myself 
warmly drawn to any one, I struggled with the 
fierce desire of seeing him through the spectacles, 
for I feared to find him something else than I 
fancied. I longed to enjoy the luxury of ignorant 
feeling, to love without knowing, to float like a 
leaf upon the eddies of life, drifted now to a sunny 
point, now to a solemn shade — now over glitter- 
ing ripples, now over gleaming calms, — and not 
to determined ports, a trim vessel with an inexo- 
rable rudder. 

" But sometimes, mastered after long struggles, 
as if the unavoidable condition of owning the 
spectacles were using them, I seized them and 
sauntered into the little town. Putting them to 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 167 

my eyes, I peered into the houses and at the 
people who passed me. Here sat a family at 
breakfast, and I stood at the window looking in. 

motley meal ! fantastic vision ! The good 
mother saw her lord sitting opposite, a grave, 
respectable being, eating muffins. But I saw 
only a bank-bill, more or less crumpled and 
tattered, marked with a larger or lesser figure. 
If a sharp wind blew suddenly, I saw it tremble 
and flutter ; it was thin, flat, impalpable. I 
removed my glasses, and looked with my eyes at 
the wife. I could have smiled to see the humid 
tenderness with which she regarded her strange 
viS'd-vis, Is life only a game of blindman's buff ? 
of droll cross-purposes ? 

"- Or I put them on again, and then looked at the 
wives. How many stout trees I saw, — how 
many tender flowers, — how many placid pools ; 
yes, and how many little streams winding out of 
sight, shrinking before the large, hard, round 
eyes opposite, and slipping off into solitude and 
shade, with a low, inner song for their own 
solace. 

" In many houses I thought to see angels, 
nymphs, or, at least, women, and could only find 
broomsticks, mops, or kettles, hurrying about, 
rattling and tinkling, in a state of shrill activity. 

1 made calls upon elegant ladies, and after I had 
enjoyed the gloss of silk, and the delicacy of lace, 
and the glitter of jewels, I slipped on my spec- 



168 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

tacles, and saw a peacock's feather, flounced, and 
furbelowed, and fluttering ; or an iron rod, thin, 
sharp, and hard ; nor could I possibly mistake the 
movement of the drapery for any flexibility of the 
thing draped. 

^' Or, mysteriously chilled, 1 saw a statue of 
perfect form, or flowing movement, it might be 
alabaster, or bronze, or marble, — but sadly often 
it was ice ; and I knew that after it had shone a 
little, and frozen a few eyes with its despairing 
perfection, it could not be put away in the niches 
of palaces for ornament and proud family tradi- 
tion, like the alabaster, or bronze, or marble, 
statues, but would melt, and shrink, and fall 
coldly away in colorless and useless Avater, be 
absorbed in the earth and utterly forgotten. 

" But the true sadness was rather in seeing 
those who, not having the spectacles, thought 
that the iron rod was flexible, and the ice statue 
warm. I saw many a gallant heart, which seemed 
to me brave and loyal as the crusaders, pursuing, 
through days and nights, and a long life of devo- 
tion, the hope of lighting at least a smile in the 
cold eyes, if not a fire in the icy heart. I watched 
the earnest, enthusiastic sacrifice. I saw the pure 
resolve, the generous faith, the fine scorn of doubt, 
the impatience of suspicion. I watched the grace, 
the ardor, the glory of devotion. Through those 
strange spectacles how often I saw the noblest 
heart renouncing all other hope, all other ambi- 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 169 

tion, all other life, than the possible love of some 
one of those statues. 

" Ah ! me, it was terrible, but they had not the 
love to give. The face was so polished and 
smooth, because there was no sorrow in the heart, 
— and drearily, often, no heart to be touched. I 
could not wonder that the noble heart of devotion 
was broken, for it had dashed itself against a stone. 
I wept, until my spectacles were dimmed, for those 
hopeless lovers ; but there was a pang beyond tears 
for those icy statues. 

"Still a boy, I was thus too much a man in 
knowledge, — I did not comprehend the sights 1 
was compelled to see. I used to tear my glasses 
away from my eyes, and, frightened at myself, 
run to escape my own consciousness. Reaching 
the small house where we then lived, I plunged 
into my grandmother's room, and, throwing myself 
upon the floor, buried my face in her lap ; and 
sobbed myself to sleep with premature grief. 

" But when I awakened, and felt her cool hand 
upon my hot forehead, and heard the low sweet 
song, or the gentle story, or the tenderly told 
parable from the Bible, with which she tried to 
soothe me, I could not resist the mystic fascination 
that lured me, as I lay in her lap, to steal a glance 
at her through the spectacles. 

" Pictures of the Madonna have not her rare 
and pensive beauty.' Upon the tranquil little 
islands her life had been eventless, and all the 



170 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

fine possibilities of her nature were like flowers 
that never bloomed. Placid were all her years ; 
yet I have read of no 'heroine, of no woman great 
in sudden crises, that it did not seem to me she 
might have been. The wife and widow of a man 
who loved his home better than the homes of 
others, I have yet heard of no queen, no belle, no 
imperial beauty, whom in grace, and brilliancy, 
and persuasive courtesy she might not have 
surpassed. 

" Madam," said Titbottom to my wife, whose 
heart hung upon his story, " your husband's young 
friend, Aurelia, wears sometimes a camellia in her 
hair, and no diamond in the ball-room seems so 
costly as that perfect flower, which women envy, 
and for whose least and withered petal men sigh ; 
yet, in the tropical solitudes of Brazil, how many 
a camellia bud drops from the bush that no eye 
has ever seen, which, had it flowered and been 
noticed, would have gilded all hearts with its 
memory. 

" When I stole these furtive glances at my 
grandmother, half fearing that they were wrong, 
I saw only a calm lake, whose shores were low, 
and over which the sun hung unbroken, so that 
the least star was clearly reflected. It had an 
atmosphere of solemn twilight tranquillity, and so 
completely did its unruffled surface blend with 
the cloudless, star-studded sky, that, when I 
looked through my spectacles at my grand- 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 171 

mother, the vision seemed to me all heaven and 
stars. 

'' Yet, as I gazed and gazed, I felt what stately 
cities might well have been built upon those 
shores, and have flashed prosperity over the calm, 
like coruscations of pearls. I dreamed of gorgeous 
fleets, silken-sailed, and blown by perfumed winds, 
drifting over those depthless waters and through 
those spacious skies. I gazed upon the twilight, 
the inscrutable silence, like a God-fearing dis- 
coverer upon a new and vast sea bursting upon 
him through forest glooms, and in the fervor of 
whose impassioned gaze a millennial and poetic 
world arises, and man need no longer die to be 
happy. 

"My companions naturally deserted me, for I 
had grown wearily grave and abstracted : and, 
unable to resist the allurements of my spectacles, 
I was constantly lost in the world, of which those 
companions were part, yet of which they knew 
nothing. 

" I grew cold and hard, almost morose ; people 
seemed to me so blind and unreasonable. They 
did the wrong thing. They called green, yellow ; 
and black, white. Young men said of a girl, 
' What a lovely, simple creature ! ' I looked, and 
there was only a glistening wisp of straw, dry and 
hollow. Or they said, ' What a cold, proud 
beauty ! ' I looked, and lo ! a Madonna, whose 
heart held the world. Or they said, ' What a 



172 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

wild, giddy girl ! ' and I saw a glancing, dancing 
mountain stream, pure as the virgin snows whence 
it flowed, singing through sun and shade, over 
pearls and gold dust, slipping along unstained by 
weed or rain, or heavy foot of cattle, touching the 
flowers with a dewy kiss, — a beam of grace, a 
happy song, a line of light, in the dim and troubled 
landscape. 

'' My grandmother sent me to school, but I 
looked at the master, and saw that he was a 
smooth, round ferule, or an improper noun, or a 
vulgar fraction, and refused to obey him. Or he 
was a piece of string, a rag, a willow wand, and I 
had a contemptuous pity. But one was a well of 
cool, deep water, and looking suddenly in, one day, 
I saw the stars. 

'' That one gave me all my schooling. With 
him I used to walk by the sea, and, as we strolled 
and the waves plunged in long legions before us, 
I looked at him through the spectacles, and as his 
eyes dilated with the boundless view, and his 
chest heaved with an impossible desire, I saw 
Xerxes and his army, tossed and glittering, rank 
upon rank, multitude upon multitude, out of sight, 
but ever regularly advancing, and, with confused 
roar of ceaseless music, prostrated themselves in 
abject homage. Or, as with arms outstretched and 
hair streaming on the wind, he chanted full lines of 
the resounding Iliad, I saw Homer pacing the Egean 
sands of the Greek sunsets of forgotten times. 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 173 

" My grandmother died, and I was thrown into 
the world without resources, and with no capital 
but my spectacles. I tried to find employment, 
but everybody was shy of me. There was a vague 
suspicion that I was either a little crazed, or a 
good deal in league with the prince of darkness. 
My companions, who would persist in calling a 
piece of painted muslin a fair and fragrant flower, 
had no difficulty ; success waited for them around 
every corner, and arrived in every ship. 

" I tried to teach, for I loved children. But if 
anything excited a suspicion of my pupils, and 
putting on my spectacles, I saw that I was fond- 
ling a snake, or smelling at a bud with a worm in 
it, I sprang up in horror and ran away; or, if it 
seemed to me, through the glasses, that a cherub 
smiled upon me, or a rose was blooming in my but- 
ton-hole, then I felt myself imperfect and impure, 
not fit to be leading and training what was so 
essentially superior to myself, and I kissed the 
children and left them weeping and wondering. 

" In despair I went to a great merchant on the 
island, and asked him to employ me. 

" ' My dear young friend,' said he, 'I understand 
that you have some singular secret, some charm, 
or spell, or amulet, or something, I don't know 
what, of which people are afraid. Now, you know, 
my dear,' said tlie merchant, swelling up, and 
apparently prouder of his great stomach than of 
his large fortune, ' I am not of that kind. I am 



174 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

not easily frightened. You may spare yourself 
the pain of trying to impose upon me. People 
who propose to come to time before I arrive, are 
accustomed to arise very early in the morning,' 
said he, thrusting his thumbs in the armholes of 
his waistcoat, and spreading the fingers like two 
fans, upon his bosom. 'I think I have heard 
something of your secret. You have a pair of 
spectacles, I believe, that you value very much, 
because your grandmother brought them as a mar- 
riage portion to your grandfather. Now, if you 
think fit to sell me those spectacles, I will pay 
you the largest market price for them. What do 
you say ? ' 

"- 1 told him I had not the slightest idea of sell- 
ing my spectacles. 

" ' My young friend means to eat them, I sup- 
pose,' said he, with a contemptuous smile. 

" I made no reply, but was turning to leave the 
office, when the merchant called after me : — 

" ' My young friend, poor people should never 
suffer themselves to get into pets. Anger is an 
expensive luxury, in which only men of a certain 
income can indulge. A pair of spectacles and a 
hot temper are not the most promising capital for 
success in life. Master Titbottom.' 

" I said nothing, but put my hand upon the 
door to go out, when the merchant said more 
respectfully : — 

'^ ' Well, you foolish boy, if you will not sell 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 176 

your spectacles, perhaps you will agree to sell the 
use of them to me. That is, you shall only put 
them on when I direct you, and for my purposes. 
Hallo ! you little fool ! ' cried he, impatiently, as 
he saw that I intended to make no reply. 

"But I had pulled out my spectacles and put 
them on for my own purposes, and against his 
wish and desire. I looked at him, and saw a huge, 
bald-headed, wild boar, with gross chaps and a leer- 
ing eye — only the more ridiculous for the high- 
arch, gold-bowed spectacles that straddled his 
nose. One of his fore-hoofs was thrust into the 
safe, where his bills receivable were hived, and 
the other into his pocket, among the loose change 
and bills there. His ears were pricked forward 
with a brisk, sensitive smartness. In a world 
where prize pork was the best excellence, he 
would have carried off all the premiums. 

" I stepped into the next office in the street, and 
a mild-faced, genial man, also a large and opulent 
merchant, asked me my business in such a tone, 
that I instantly looked through my spectacles, and 
saw a land flowing with milk and honey. There 
I pitched my tent, and stayed till the good man 
died, and his business was discontinued. 

" But while there," said Titbottom, and his 
voice trembled away into a sigh, '' I first saw 
Preciosa. Despite the spectacles, I saw Preciosa. 
For days, for weeks, for months, I did not take 
my spectacles with me. I ran away from them, 



176 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

I threw them up on high shelves, I tried to make 
up my mind to throw them into the sea, or down 
the well. I could not, I would not, I dared not 
look at Preciosa through the spectacles. It was 
not possible for me deliberately to destroy them ; 
but I awoke in the night, and could almost have 
cursed my dear old grandfather for his gift. 

" I sometimes escaped from the office, and sat 
for whole days with Preciosa. I told her the 
strange things I had seen with my mystic glasses. 
The hours were not enough for the wild romances 
which I raved in her ear. She listened, aston- 
ished and appalled. Her blue eyes turned upon 
me with sweet deprecation. She clung to me 
and then withdrew, and fled fearfully from the 
room. 

" But she could not stay away. She could not 
resist my voice, in whose tones burnt all the love 
that filled my heart and brain. The very effort 
to resist the desire of seeing her as I saw everybody 
else, gave a frenzy and an unnatural tension to my 
feeling and my manner. I sat by her side, look- 
ing into her eyes, smoothing her hair, folding her 
to my heart, which was sunken deep and deep — 
why not forever? — in that dream of peace. I ran 
from her presence, and shouted, and leaped with 
joy, and sat the whole night through, thrilled into 
happiness by the thought of her love and loveli- 
ness, like a wind-harp, tightly strung, and answer- 
ing the airiest sigh of the breeze with music. 



AMEBIC AN ESSAYS 177 

" Then came calmer days — the conviction of 
deep love settled upon our lives — as after the 
hurrying, heaving days of spring comes the bland 
and benignant summer. 

'^ ' It is no dream, then, after all, and we are 
happy,' I said to her, one day ; and there came no 
answer, for happiness is speechless. 

" ' We are happy, then,' I said to myself, ' there 
is no excitement now. How glad I am that I can 
now look at her through my spectacles.' 

" I feared lest some instinct should warn me to 
beware. I escaped from her arms, and ran home 
and seized the glasses, and bounded back again to 
Preciosa. As I entered the room I was heated, 
my head was swimming with confused apprehen- 
sions, my eyes must have glared. Preciosa was 
frightened, and rising from her seat, stood with 
an inquiring glance of surprise in her eyes. 

" But I was bent with frenzy upon my purpose. 
I was merely aware that she was in the room. I 
saw nothing else. I heard nothing. I cared for 
nothing, but to see her through that magic glass, 
and feel at once all the fullness of blissful perfec- 
tion which that would reveal. Preciosa stood before 
the mirror, but alarmed at my wild and eager move- 
ments, unable to distinguish what I had in my 
hands, and seeing me raise them suddenlj^ to my 
face, she shrieked with terror, and fell fainting 
upon the floor, at the very moment that I placed 
the glasses before my eyes, and beheld — myself^ 



178 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

reflected in the mirror, before which she had been 
standing. 

'' Dear madam," cried Titbottom, to my wife, 
springing up and falling back again in his chair, 
pale and trembling, while Prue ran to him and 
took his hand, and I poured out a glass of water 
— "I saw myself." 

There was silence for many minutes. Prue laid 
her hands gently upon the head of our guest, 
whose eyes were closed, and who breathed softly 
like an infant in sleeping. Perhaps, in all the 
long years of anguish since that hour, no tender 
hand had touched his brow, nor wiped away the 
damps of a bitter sorrow. Perhaps the tender, 
maternal fingers of my wife soothed his weary 
head with the conviction that he felt the hand of 
his mother playing with the long hair of her boy 
in the soft West India morning. Perhaps it was 
only the natural relief of expressing a pent-up 
sorrow. 

When he spoke again, it was with the old sub- 
dued tone, and the air of quaint solemnity. 

'' These things were matters of long, long ago, 
and I came to this country soon after. I brought 
with me, premature age, a past of melancholy 
memories, and the magic spectacles. I had become 
their slave. I had nothing more to fear. Having 
seen myself, I was compelled to see others, properly 
to understand my relations to them. The lights 
that cheer the future of other men had gone out 



AMERICAN ESSAYS. 179 

for me ; my eyes were those of an exile turned 
backwards upon the receding shore, and not for- 
wards with hope upon the ocean. 

" I mingled with men, but with little pleasure. 
There are but many varieties of a few types. I 
did not find those I came to clearer sighted than 
those I had left behind. I heard men called 
shrewd and wise, and report said they were highly 
intelligent and successful. My finest sense de- 
tected no aroma of purity and principle ; but I 
saw only a fungus that had flattened and spread 
in a night. They went to the theaters to see 
actors upon the stage. I went to see actors in the 
boxes, so consummately cunning, that others did 
not know they were acting, and they did not sus- 
pect it themselves. 

"Perhaps you wonder it did not make me mis- 
anthropical. My dear friends, do not forget that 
I had seen myself. That made me compassionate, 
not cynical. 

" Of course, I could not value highly the ordi- 
nary standards of success and excellence. When I 
went to church and saw a thin, blue, artificial 
flower, or a great sleepy cushion, expounding the 
beauty of holiness to pews full of eagles, half- 
eagles, and three-pences, however adroitly con- 
cealed they might be in broadcloth and boots, or 
saw an onion in an Easter bonnet weeping over 
the sins of Magdalen,^ I did not feel as they felt 
who saw in all this, not only propriety, but piety. 



180 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

" Or when at public meetings an eel stood up 
on end, and wriggled and squirmed litliely in 
every direction, and declared that, for his part, he 
went in for rainbows and hot water, — how could 
I help seeing that he was still black and loved a 
slimy pool? 

" I could not grow misanthropical when I saw 
in the eyes of so many who were called old, the 
gushing fountains of eternal youth, and the light 
of an immortal dawn, or when I saw those who 
were esteemed unsuccessful and aimless, ruling a 
fair realm of peace and plenty, either in their own 
hearts, or in another's — a realm and princely 
possession for which they had well renounced a 
hopeless search and a belated triumph. 

" I knew one man who had been for years a 
byword for having sought the philosopher's stone. 
But I looked at him through the spectacles and 
saw a satisfaction in concentrated energies and a 
tenacity arising from devotion to a noble dream 
which was not apparent in the youths who pitied 
him in the aimless effeminacy of clubs, nor in the 
clever gentlemen who cracked their thin jokes 
upon him over a gossiping dinner. 

" And there was your neighbor over the way, 
who passes for a woman who has failed in her 
career, because she is an old maid. People wag 
solemn heads of pity, and say that she made so 
great a mistake in not marrying the brilliant and 
famous man who was for long years her suitor. 



AMEBIC AN ESSAYS 181 

It is clear that no orange flower will ever bloom 
for her. The young people make their tender 
romances about her as they watch her, and think 
of her solitary hours of bitter regret and wasting 
longing, never to be satisfied. 

" When I first came to town I shared this sym- 
pathy, and pleased my imagination with fancying 
her hard struggle with the conviction that she had 
lost all that made life beautiful. I supposed that 
if I had looked at her through my spectacles, I 
should see that it was only her radiant temper 
which so illuminated her dress, that we did not 
see it to be heavy sables. 

" But when, one day, I did raise my glasses, and 
glanced at her, I did not see the old maid whom 
we all pitied for a secret sorrow, but a woman 
whose nature was a tropic, in which the sun shone, 
and birds sang, and flowers bloomed forever. 
There were no regrets, no doubts and half wishes, 
but a calm sweetness, a transparent peace. I saw 
her blush when that old lover passed by, or paused 
to speak to her, but it was only the sign of deli- 
cate feminine consciousness. She knew his love, 
and honored it, although she could not under- 
stand it nor return it. I looked closely at her, 
and I saw that, although the world had ex- 
claimed at her indifference to such homage, and 
had declared it was astonishing she should lose 
so fine a match, shenvould only say simply and 
quietly : — 



182 BAWTHOBNE CLASSICS 



u i 



If Shakespeare loved me and I did not love 
him, how could I marry him?' 

"Could I be misanthropical when I saw such 
fidelity, and dignity, and simplicity ? 

" You may believe that I was especially curious 
to look at that old lover of hers through my 
glasses. He was no longer young, you know, 
when I came, and his fame and fortune were 
secure. Certainly I have heard of few men more 
beloved, and of none more worthy to be loved. 
He had the easy manner of a man of the world, 
the sensitive grace of a poet, and the charitable 
judgment of a wide traveler. He was accounted 
the most successful and most unspoiled of men. 
Handsome, brilliant, wise, tender, graceful, accom- 
plished, rich, and famous, I looked at him, without 
the spectacles, in surprise and admiration, and 
wondered how your neighbor over the way had 
been so entirely untouched by his homage. I 
watched their intercourse in society, I saw her 
gay smile, her cordial greeting ; I marked his 
frank address, his lofty courtesy. Their manner 
told no tales. The eager world was balked, and I 
pulled out my spectacles. 

"• I had seen her already, and now I saw him. 
He lived only in memory, and his memory was a 
spacious and stately palace. But he did not often- 
est frequent the banqueting hall, where were end- 
less hospitality and feasting, — nor did he loiter 
much in the reception rooms, where a throng of 



AMEBIC AN ESSAYS 183 

new visitors was forever swarming, — nor did he 
feed his vanity by haunting the apartment in 
which were stored the trophies of his varied tri- 
umphs, — nor dream much in the great gallery 
hung with pictures of his travels. 

" From all these lofty halls of memory he con- 
stantly escaped to a remote and solitary chamber^ 
into which no one had ever penetrated. But my 
fatal eyes, behind the glasses, followed and entered 
with him, and saw that the chamber was a chapel. 
It was dim, and silent, and sweet with perpetual 
incense, that burned upon an altar before a picture 
forever veiled. There, whenever I chanced to 
look, I saw him kneel and pray ; and there, by day 
and by night, a funeral hymn was chanted. 

" I do not believe you will be surprised that I 
have been content to remain a deputy bookkeeper. 
My spectacles regulated my ambition, and I early 
learned that there were better gods than Plutus. 
The glasses have lost much of their fascination 
now, and I do not often use them. But some- 
times the desire is irresistible. Whenever I am 
greatly interested, I am compelled to take them 
out and see what it is that I admire. 

''And yet — and yet," said Titbottom, after a 
pause, " I am not sure that I thank my grand- 
father." 

Prue had long since laid away her work, and 
had heard every word of the story. I saw that 
the dear woman had yet one question to ask, and 



184 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

had been earnestly hoping to hear something that 
would spare her the necessity of asking. But 
Titbottom had resumed his usual tone, after the 
momentary excitement, and made no further allu- 
sion to himself. We all sat silently; Titbot- 
tom's eyes fastened musingly upon the carpet, 
Prue looking wistfully at him, and I regarding 
both. 

It was past midnight, and our guest arose to go. 
He shook hands quietly, made his grave Spanish 
bow to Prue, and, taking his hat, went toward the 
front door. Prue and I accompanied him. I saw 
in her eyes that she would ask her question. 
And as Titbottom opened the door, I heard the 
low words : — 

"And Preciosa?" 

Titbottom paused. He had just opened the 
door, and the moonlight streamed over him as he 
stood, turning back to us. 

" I have seen her but once since. It was in 
church, and she was kneeling, with her eyes closed, 
so that she did not see me. But I rubbed the glasses 
well, and looked at her, and saw a white lily, 
whose stem was broken, but which was fresh, and 
luminous, and fragrant still." 

" That was a miracle," interrupted Prue. 

" Madam, it was a miracle," replied Titbottom, 
'' and for that one sight I am devoutly grateful 
for my grandfather's gift. I saw that, although 
a flower may have lost its hold upon earthly 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 185 

moisture, it may still bloom as sweetly, fed by the 
dews of heaven." 

The door closed, and he was gone. But as Prue 
put her arm in mine, and we went upstairs together, 
she whispered in my ear : — 

"How glad I am that you don't wear spec- 
tacles." 

What did Curtis mean by those spectacles ? 

It is a thankless task to explain what should be obvious to every 
one, and it is not a very certain benefit to explain a poem that may 
not quite explain itself. A poem is not merely a thought. We are 
too apt to think that if we seize the thought and make it clear-cut 
in our mind and definite, we shall have the chief thing in the poem: 
too often we have thus missed the chief thing, for we have lost the 
poetic atmosphere and feeling. We must not be too eager to reduce 
poetry to thought. Now an allegory is poetical in character, and 
this story of Titbottom's spectacles is allegorical. We must, there- 
fore, touch it gently. Still it seems to us that it is very possible 
that at a first reading one will not get the full intent of the writer. 
To get the full intent, do we not need more than a recollection of 
that series of pictures that Titbottom saw ? Do we not need the 
idea that lies at bottom ? 

What did Titbottom see through his spectacles ? did he see the 
truth? Surely not abstract truth. Instead of his grandfather, he 
saw the calm peace of West Indian life; instead of his grand- 
mother, he saw the tranquil peace of the lake at twilight ; instead 
of the man of business, he saw a wild boar with gold spectacles ; 
instead of Preciosa, he saw the broken lily with miraculous life. 
Instead of each thing as it appeared to the world, he saw it as 
something else ; not as it was, but otherwise. Shall we call that 
seeing the truth ? 

Perhaps we may not at first think that it is, and yet we should 
probably admit that Titbottom looked beneath the surface and saw 
life more as it truly was. That man of business, for instance ; we 
feel that we get more of his true nature when we think of him as 
the cruel and ravenous boar than when we think of him in his 
general human appearance^in a coat and trousers. Other men who 
were outwardly like him were very different at heart, and Tit- 



186 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

bottom's glasses showed him the difference. So of Preciosa when 
he looked at her. Outwardly she looked like any beautiful woman 
who is absorbed in religious contemplation. But as Titbottom 
knew, some such were merely onions in Easter bonnets. When 
Titbottom looked at Preciosa, he saw that she had all the purity 
and beauty and vitality of the lily, and that she had all these 
although her life was broken in two. 

But if Titbottom saw the truth, he saw it as a poet ; he saw it in 
picture, not in sentence ; he saw it in image, not in thought. Per- 
haps the story itself is a caution not to be satisfied with under- 
standing it^ 



FROM "MY STUDY WINDOWS" 



■♦o*- 



EMERSON THE LECTURER i 

It is a singular fact, that Mr. Emerson is the 
most steadily attractive lecturer in America. Into 
that somewhat cold-waterish region adventurers 
of the sensational kind come down now and then 
with a splash, to become disregarded King Logs 
before the next season. But Mr. Emerson always 
draws. A lecturer now^ for something like a 
third of a century, one of the pioneers of the 
lecturing system, the charm of his voice, his 
manner, and his matter has never lost its power 
over his earlier hearers, and continually winds 
new ones in its enchanting meshes. What they 
do not fully understand they take on trust, and 

1 Copyright, 1871, by James Russell Lowell ; 1899, by Mabel 
Burnett. 

2 This essay was written, as appears later, in 1868, when it was 
still common for eminent men of letters to use the lecture-platform 
as a means of publication. We do not now often think of Emerson 
as a lecturer: his lectures liave become essays. But Lowell has so 
exactly hit the true spirit of Emerson that his criticism is almost 
as useful as it was on the day it was written. 

187 



188 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

listen, saying to themselves, as the old poet of 
Sir Philip Sidney : — 

"A sweet, attractive, kind of grace, 
A full assurance given by looks, 
Continual comfort in a face. 
The lineaments of gospel books." 

We call it a singular fact, because we Yankees 
are thought to be fond of the spread-eagle style, 
and nothing can be more remote from that than 
his. We are reckoned a practical folk, who would 
rather hear about a new air-tight stove than about 
Plato ; yet our favorite teacher's practicality is 
not in the least of the Poor Richard ^ variety. If 
he have any Buncombe constituency, it is that 
unrealized commonwealth of philosophers which 
Plotinus proposed to establish ; and if he were 
to make an almanac, his directions to farmers 
would be something like this : " October : In- 
dian Summer; now is the time to get in your 
early Vedas."^ What, then, is his secret? Is it 
not that he out- Yankees us all? that his range 
includes us all? that he is equally at home with 
the potato-disease and original sin, with pegging 
shoes and the Over-soul?^ that, as we try all 
trades, so has he tried all cultures? and above 
all, that his mysticism gives us a counterpoise 
to our super-practicality? 

1 Into whose mouth Franklin put the practical wisdom for which 
he was famous. 

2 Sacred books of the East. 

3 The title of one of Emerson's essays. 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 189 

There is no man living to whom, as a writer, 
so many of us feel and thankfully acknowledge 
so great an indebtedness for ennobling impulses, 
— none whom so many cannot abide. What does 
he mean? ask these last. Where is his system? 
What is the use of it all? What the deuce have 
we to do with Brahma ? ^ I do not propose to 
write an essay on Emerson at this time. I will 
only say that one may find grandeur and con- 
solation in a starlit night without caring to ask 
what it means, save grandeur and consolation; 
one may like Montaigne, as some ten generations 
before us have done, without thinking him so 
systematic as some more eminently tedious (or 
shall we say tediously eminent?) authors; one 
may think roses as good in their way as cabbages, 
though the latter would make a better show in 
the witness-box, if cross-examined as to their use- 
fulness ; and as for Brahma, why, he can take 
care of himself, and won't bite us at any rate. 

The bother with Mr. Emerson is, that, though 
he writes in prose, he is essentially a poet. If 
you undertake to paraphrase what he says, and 
to reduce it to words of one syllable for infant 
minds, you will make as sad work of it as the 
good monk with his analysis of Homer in the 
"Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum."^ We look 

1 One of Emerson's poems is on Brahma. 

2 "Epistles of Obscure Men," a famous series of satires during 
the Reformation. 



190 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

upon him as one of the few men of genius 
whom our age has produced, and there needs 
no better proof of it than his masculine faculty 
of fecundating other minds. Search for his elo- 
quence in his books and you will perchance miss 
it, but meanwhile you will find that it has kindled 
all your thoughts. For choice and pith of lan- 
guage he belongs to a better age than ours, and 
might rub shoulders with Fuller and Browne, — 
though he does use that abominable word reliable. 
His eye for a fine, telling phrase that will carry 
true is like that of a backwoodsman for a rifle ; 
and he will dredge you up a choice word from 
the mud of Cotton Mather himself. A diction 
at once so rich and so homely as his I know not 
where to match in these days of writing by the 
page; it is like homespun cloth-of-gold. The 
many cannot miss his meaning, and only the few 
can find it. It is the open secret of all true 
genius. It is wholesome to angle in those pro- 
found pools, though one be rewarded with noth- 
ing more than the leap of a fish that flashes his 
freckled side in the sun and as suddenly absconds 
in the dark and dreamy waters again. There is 
keen excitement, though there be no ponderable 
acquisition. If we carry nothing home in our 
baskets, there is ample gain in dilated lungs and 
stimulated blood. What does he mean, quotha? 
He means inspiring hints, a divining-rod to your 
deeper nature. No doubt, Emerson, like all origi- 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 191 

nal men, has his peculiar audience, and yet I know 
none that can hold a promiscuous crowd in pleased 
attention so long as he. As in all original men, 
there is something for every palate. ''Would you 
know," says Goethe, "the ripest cherries? Ask the 
boys and the blackbirds." 

The announcement that such a pleasure as a 
new course of lectures by him is coming, to people 
as old as I am, is something like those forebodings 
of spring that prepare us every year for a familiar 
novelty, none the less novel, when it arrives, be- 
cause it is familiar. We know perfectly well 
what we are to expect from Mr. Emerson, and 
yet what he says always penetrates and stirs us, 
as is apt to be the case with genius, in a very 
unlooked-for fashion. Perhaps genius is one of 
the few things which we gladly allow to repeat 
itself, — one of the few that multiply rather than 
weaken the force of their impression by iteration? 
Perhaps some of us hear more than the mere 
words, are moved by something deeper than the 
thoughts? If it be so, we are quite right, for it 
is thirty years and more of " plain living and high 
thinking " ^ that speak to us in this altogether 
unique lay-preacher. We have shared in the 
beneficence of this varied culture, this fearless 
impartiality in criticism and speculation, this mas- 
culine sincerity, this sweetness of nature which 

1 A phrase from one of Wordsworth's sonnets, taken as a motto 
by New England culture. 



192 HAWTHOBNE CLASSICS 

rather stimulates than cloys, for a generation 
long. If ever there was a standing testimonial 
to the cumulative power and value of Character 
(and we need it sadly in these days), we have it 
in this gracious and dignified presence. What 
an antiseptic is a pure life ! At sixty-five (or 
two years beyond his grand climacteric, as he 
would prefer to call it) he has that privilege of 
soul which abolishes the calendar, and presents 
him to us always the unwasted contemporary of 
his own prime. I do not know if he seem old 
to his younger hearers, but we Avho have known 
him so long wonder at the tenacity with which 
he maintains himself even in the outposts of 
youth. I suppose it is not the Emerson of 1868 
to whom we listen. For us the whole life of the 
man is distilled in the clear drop of every sen- 
tence, and behind each word we divine the force 
of a noble character, the weight of a large capital 
of thinking and being. We do not go to hear 
what Emerson says so much as to hear Emerson. 
Not that we perceive any falling-off in anything 
that ever was essential to the charm of Mr. Emer- 
son's peculiar style of thought or phrase. The 
first lecture, to be sure, was more disjointed even 
than common. It was as if, after vainly trying 
to get his paragraphs into sequence and order, 
he had at last tried the desperate expedient of 
shuffling them. It was chaos come again, but it 
was a chaos full of shooting-stars, a jumble of 



AMEBIC AN ESSAYS 193 

creative forces. The second lecture, on " Criti- 
cism and Poetry," was quite up to the level of 
old times, full of that power of strangely subtle 
association whose indirect approaches startle the 
mind into almost painful attention, of those flashes 
of mutual understanding between speaker and 
hearer that are gone ere one can say it lightens. 
The vice of Emerson's criticism seems to be, that 
while no man is so sensitive to what is poetical, 
few men are less sensible than he of what makes 
a poem. He values the solid meaning of thought 
above the subtler meaning of style. He would 
prefer Donne, I suspect, to Spenser, and some- 
times mistakes the queer for the original. 

To be young is surely the best, if the most pre- 
carious, gift of life ; yet there are some of us who 
would hardly consent to be young again, if it were 
at the cost of our recollection of Mr. Emerson's 
first lectures during the consulate of Van Buren.^ 
We used to walk in from the country to the Ma- 
sonic Temple (I think it was), through the crisp 
winter night, and listen to that thrilling voice of 
his, so charged with subtle meaning and subtle 
music, as shipwrecked men on a raft to the hail of 
a ship that came with unhoped-for food and rescue. 
Cynics might say what they liked. Did our own 
imaginations transfigure dry remainder-biscuit into 

lA reminiscence of a phrase (consule Planco) in which Horace 
refers to his youth. Van Buren was President from 1837 to 1841, 
when Lowell was just out of college, 
o 



194 HAWTHOBNE CLASSICS 

ambrosia ? At any rate he brought us Ufe^ which, 
on the whole, is no bad tiling. Was it all tran- 
scendentalism ? magic-lantern pictures on mist ? 
As you will. Those, then, were just what we 
wanted. But it was not so. The delight and the 
benefit were that he put us in communication with 
a larger style of thought, sharpened our wits with 
a more pungent phrase, gave us ravishing glimpses 
of an ideal under the dry husk of our New Eng- 
land ; made us conscious of the supreme and ever- 
lasting originality of whatever bit of soul might 
be in any of us ; freed us, in short, from the stocks 
of prose in which we had sat so long that we had 
grown well-nigh contented in our cramps. And 
who that saw the audience will ever forget it, 
where every one still capable of fire, or longing to 
renew in them the half-forgotten sense of it, was 
gathered ? Those faces, young and old, agleam 
with pale intellectual light, eager with pleased 
attention, flash upon me once more from the deep 
recesses of the years with an exquisite pathos. 
Ah, beautiful young eyes, brimming with love and 
hope, wholly vanished now in that other world we 
call the Past, or peering doubtfully through the 
pensive gloaming of memory, your light impover- 
ishes these cheaper days ! I hear again that rustle 
of sensation, as they turned to exchange glances 
over some pithier thought, some keener flash of 
that humor which always played about the horizon 
of his mind like heat-lightning, and it seems now 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 195 

like the sad whisper of the autumn leaves that are 
whirling around me. But would my picture be 
complete if I forgot that ample and vegete coun- 
tenance of Mr. R of W , — how, from its 

regular post at the corner of the front bench, it 
turned in ruddy triumph to the profaner audience 
as if he were the inexplicably appointed fugleman 
of appreciation ? I was reminded of him by those 
hearty cherubs in Titian's Assumption that look 
at you as who should say, '*• Did you ever see a 
Madonna like that? Did you ever behold one 
hundred and fifty pounds of womanhood mount 
heavenward before like a rocket ? " 

To some of us that long-past experience remains 
as the most marvelous and fruitful we have ever 
had. Emerson awakened us, saved us from the 
body of this death. It is the sound of the trum- 
pet that the young soul longs for, careless what 
breath may fill it. Sidney heard it in the ballad of 
" Chevy Chase," and Ave in Emerson. Nor did it 
blow retreat, but called to us with assurance of vic- 
tory. Did they say he was disconnected ? So were 
the stars, that seemed larger to our eyes, still keen 
with that excitement, as we walked homeward with 
prouder stride over the creaking snow. And were 
they not knit together by a higher logic than our 
mere sense could master ? Were we enthusiasts ? 
I hope and believe we were, and am thankful to 
the man who made us" worth something for once in 
our lives. If asked what was left ? what we car- 



196 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

ried home ? we should not have been careful for 
an answer. It would have been enough if we had 
said that something beautiful had passed that way. 
Or we might have asked in return what one brought 
away from a symphony of Beethoven? Enough 
that he had set that ferment of wholesome discon- 
tent at work in us. There is one, at least, of those 
old hearers, so many of whom are now in the frui- 
tion of that intellectual beauty of which Emerson 
gave them both the desire and the foretaste, who 
will always love to repeat : — 

*' Che in la mente m'6 fitta, ed or m'accuora 
La cara e buona immagine paterna 
Di voi, quando nel mondo ad ora ad ora 
M'insegnavaste come I'uom s'eterna." ^ 

I am unconsciously thinking, as I write, of the 
third lecture of the present course, in which Mr. 
Emerson gave some delightful reminiscences of the 
intellectual influences in whose movement he had 
shared. It was like hearing Goethe read some 
passages of the " Wahrheit aus seinem Leben." 
Not that there was not a little Dichtung^^ too, here 
and there, as the lecturer built up so lofty a ped- 
estal under certain figures as to lift them into a 
prominence of obscurity, and seem to masthead 
them there. Everybody was asking his neighbor 

1 Who formed in me my mind, and now endears to me his 
dear and good paternal image, as when he taught me hour by hour, 
how man may grow immortal. 

'^ " Wahrheit und Dichtung," Truth and Poetry, is the name given 
by Goethe to the story of his early life. 



AMEBIC AN ESSAYS 197 

who this or that recondite great man was, in the 
faint hope that somebody might once have heard 
of him. There are those who call Mr. Emerson 
cold. Let them revise their judgment in presence 
of this loyalty of his that can keep warm for half 
a century, that never forgets a friendship, or fails 
to pay even a fancied obligation to the uttermost 
farthing. This substantiation of shadows was but 
incidental, and pleasantly characteristic of the man 
to those who know and love him. The greater 
part of the lecture was devoted to reminiscences 
of things substantial in themselves. He spoke of 
Everett, fresh from Greece and Germany ; of 
Channing ; of the translations of Margaret Fuller, 
Ripley, and D wight ; of the Dial and Brook Farm. 
To what he said of the latter an undertone of 
good-humored irony gave special zest. But what 
everyone of his hearers felt was that the protagonist 
in the drama was left out. The lecturer was no 
JEneas to babble the quorum magna pars fui^^ and, 
as one of his listeners, I cannot help wishing to 
say how each of them was commenting the story 
as it went along, and filling up the necessary gaps 
in it from his own private store of memories. His 
younger hearers could not know how much they 
owed to the benign impersonality, the quiet scorn 
of everything ignoble, the never-sated hunger of 
self-culture, that were personified in the man be- 
fore them. But the 'older knew how much the 

i-Of which I was a great part. 



198 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

country s intellectual emancipation was due to the 
stimulus of his teaching and example, how con- 
stantly he had kept burning the beacon of an ideal 
life above our lower region of turmoil. To him 
more than to all other causes together did the 
young martyrs of our civil war owe the sustaining 
strength of thoughtful heroism that is so touching 
in every record of their lives. Those who are 
grateful to Mr. Emerson, as many of us are, for 
what they feel to be most valuable in their culture, 
or perhaps 1 should say their impulse, are grateful 
not so much for any direct teachings of his as for 
that inspiring lift which only genius can give, and 
without which all doctrine is chaff. 

This was something like the caret which some 
of us older boys wished to fill up on the margin 
of the master's lecture. Few men have been so 
much to so many, and through so large a range of 
aptitudes and temperaments, and this simply be- 
cause all of us value manhood beyond any or all 
other qualities of character. We may suspect in 
him, here and there, a certain thinness and vague- 
ness of quality, but let the waters go over him as 
they list, this masculine fiber of his will keep its 
lively color and its toughness of texture. I have 
heard some great speakers and some accomplished 
orators, but never any that so moved and per- 
suaded men as he. There is a kind of undertow 
in that rich barytone of his that sweeps our minds 
from their foothold into deeper waters w4th a drift 



AMEBIC AN ESSAYS 199 

we cannot and would not resist. And how art- 
fully (for Emerson is a long-studied artist in these 
things) does the deliberate utterance, that seems 
waiting for the fit word, appear to admit us part- 
ners in the labor of thought and make us feel as if 
the glance of humor were a sudden suggestion, as 
if the perfect phrase lying written there on the 
desk were as unexpected to him as to us ! In 
that closely-filed speech of his at the Burns cen- 
tenary dinner every word seemed to have just 
dropped down to him from the clouds. He looked 
far away over the heads of his hearers, with a 
vague kind of expectation, as into some private 
heaven of invention, and the winged period came 
at last obedient to his spell. '' My dainty Ariel ! " 
he seemed murmuring to himself as he cast down 
his eyes as if in deprecation of the frenzy of 
approval and caught another sentence from the 
Sibylline leaves that lay before him ambushed 
behind a dish of fruit and seen only by nearest 
neighbors. Every sentence brought down the 
house, as I never saw one brought down before, 
— and it is not so easy to hit Scotsmen with a 
sentiment that has no hint of native brogue in it. 
I watched, for it was an interesting study, how 
the quick sympathy ran flashing from face to face 
down the long tables, like an electric spark thrill- 
ing as it went, and then exploded in a thunder of 
plaudits. I watched fill tables and faces vanished, 
for I too found myself caught up in the common 



200 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

enthusiasm, and my excited fancy set me under 
the be77ia^ listening to him who fulmined over 
Greece. I can never help applying to him what 
Ben Jonson said of Bacon : " There happened in 
my time one noble speaker, who was full of gravity 
in his speaking. His language was nobly censori- 
ous. No man ever spake more neatly, more pressly, 
more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idle- 
ness, in what he uttered. No member of his speech 
but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could 
not cough, or look aside from him, without loss. 
He commanded where he spoke." Those who 
heard him while their natures were yet plastic, 
and their mental nerves trembled under the slight- 
est breath of divine air, will never cease to feel 
and say : — 

*' Was never eye did see that face, 

Was never ear did hear that tongue, 
Was never mind did mind his grace, 

That ever thought the travail long ; 
But eyes, and ears, and every thought. 
Were with his sweet perfections caught." 

1 From which spoke Demosthenes. 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 201 



A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER *i 

It is the misfortune of American biography that 
it must needs be more or less provincial, and that, 
contrary to what might have been predicted, this 
quality in it predominates in proportion as the 
country grows larger. Wanting any great and 
acknowledged center of national life and thought, 
our expansion has hitherto been rather aggrega- 
tion than growth ; reputations must be hammered 
out thin to cover so wide a surface, and the sub- 
stance of most hardly holds out to the boundaries 
of a single State. Our very history wants unity, 
and down to the Revolution the attention is wearied 
and confused by having to divide itself among thir- 
teen parallel threads, instead of being concentered 
on a single clew. A sense of remoteness and seclu- 
sion comes over us as we read, and we cannot help 
asking ourselves, " Were not these things done in 
a corner ? " Notoriety may be achieved in a nar- 
row sphere, but fame demands for its evidence a 
more distant and prolonged reverberation. To 
the world at large we were but a short column of 
figures in the corner of a blue-book. New England 

* Copyright, 1871, by James Russell Lowell : 1899, by Mabel 
Burnett. 

1 This extract is the beginning of a review of " The Life of 
Josiah Quincy by his Son." -- The whole essay is not precisely of a 
character to come appropriately into our volume, so we stop, perhaps 
a little abruptly, after the more general introduction. 



202 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

exporting so much salt-fish, timber, and Medford 
rum, Virginia so many hogsheads of tobacco, and 
buying with the proceeds a certain amount of Eng- 
lish manufactures. The story of our early colo- 
nization had a certain moral interest, to be sure, 
but was altogether inferior in picturesque fascina- 
tion to that of Mexico or Peru. The lives of our 
worthies, like that of our nation, are bare of those 
foregone and far-reacliing associations with names, 
the divining-rods of fancy, which the soldiers and 
civilians of the Old World get for nothing by the 
mere accident of birth. Their historians and biog- 
raphers have succeeded to the good will, as well as 
to the long-established stand, of the shop of glory. 
Time is, after all, the greatest of poets, and the 
sons of Memory stand a better chance of being 
the heirs of Fame. The philosophic poet^ may 
find a proud solace in saying, 

" Avia Pieridum peragro loca nullius ante 
Tritasolo;"2 

but all the while he has the splendid centuries of 
Greece and Rome behind him, and can begin his 
poem with invoking a goddess from whom legend 
derived the planter of his race. His eyes looked 
out on a landscape saturated with glorious recol- 
lections ; he had seen Caesar, and heard Cicero. 
But who shall conjure with Saugus or Cato Four 

1 Lucretius. 

2 I seek the trackless regions of the Muses, pressed by no foot 
before. 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 20^ 

Corners, — with Israel Putnam or Return Jona- 
than Meigs? We have been transplanted, and 
for us the long hierarchical succession of history 
is broken. The Past has not laid its venerable 
hands upon us in consecration, conveying to us 
that mysterious influence whose force is in its con- 
tinuity. We are to Europe as the Church of Eng- 
land to her of Rome. The latter old lady may be 
the Scarlet Woman, or the Beast with ten horns, 
if you will, but hers are all the heirlooms, hers 
that vast spiritual estate of tradition, nowhere yet 
everywhere, whose revenues are none the less fruit- 
ful for being levied on the imagination. We may 
claim that England's history is also ours, but it is 
a de jure^ and not a de facto property that we have 
in it, — something that may be proved indeed, yet 
is a merely intellectual satisfaction, and does not 
savor of the realty. Have we not seen the mock- 
ery crown and scepter of the exiled Stuarts in 
St. Peter's? the medal struck so lately as 1784, 
with its legend, Hen IX Mag Brit et Hib Rex,i 
whose contractions but faintly typify the scantness 
of the fact ? 

As the novelist complains that our society wants 
that sharp contrast of character and costume which 
comes of caste, so in the narrative of our historians 
we miss what may be called background and per- 
spective, as if the events and the actors in them 

1 Henry IX., King of Great Britain and Ireland. This was Henry 
Stuart, grandson of James II. 



204 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

failed of that cumulative interest which only a 
long historical entail can give. Relatively, the 
crusade of Sir William PepperelP was of more 
consequence than that of St. Louis, and yet for- 
give us, injured shade of the second American 
baronet, if we find the narrative of Joinville more 
interesting than your despatches to Governor 
Shirley. Relatively, the insurrection of that 
Daniel whose Irish patronymic Shea was eupho- 
nized into Sliays,^ as a set-off for the debasing of 
French chaise into shay^ was more dangerous than 
that of Charles Edward ; but for some reason or 
other (as vice sometimes has the advantage of 
virtue) the latter is more enticing to the imagina- 
tion, and the least authentic relic of it in song or 
story has a relish denied to the painful industry 
of Minot. Our events seem to fall short of that 
colossal proportion which befits the monumental 
style. Look grave as we will, there is something 
ludicrous in Counsellor Keane's pig being the 
pivot of a revolution.^ We are of yesterday, and 
it is to no purpose that our political augurs divine 
from the flight of our eagles that to-morrow shall 
be ours, and flatter us with an all-hail hereafter. 
Things do really gain in greatness by being acted 
on a great and cosmopolitan stage, because there 
is inspiration in the thronged audience, and the 

1 The capture of Louisburg. 

2 Shays 's war so called ; a rebellion in 1786 in western Massachu- 
setts. 

3 In the early days of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 205 

nearer match that puts men on their mettle« 
Webster was more largely endowed by nature than 
Fox, and Fisher Ames not much below Burke as a 
talker ; but what a difference in the intellectual 
training, in the literary culture and associations, 
in the whole social outfit, of the men who were 
their antagonists and companions ! It should seem 
that, if it be collision with other minds and with 
events that strikes or draws the fire from a man, 
then tiie quality of those might have something 
to do with the quality of the fire, — whether it 
shall be culinary or electric. We have never 
known the varied stimulus, the inexorable criti- 
cism, the many-sided opportunity of a great 
metropolis, the inspiring reenforcement of an un- 
divided national consciousness. In everything but 
trade we have missed the invigoration of foreign 
rivalrj^ We may prove that we are this and that 
and the other, — our Fourth-of- July orators have 
proved it time and again, — the census has proved 
it ; but the Muses are women, and have no great 
fancy for statistics, though easily silenced by them. 
We are great, we are rich, we are all kinds of 
good things ; but did it never occur to you that 
somehow we are not interesting, except as a phe- 
nomenon ? It may safely be affirmed that for one 
cultivated man in this country who studies Ameri- 
can, there are fifty who study European history, 
ancient or modern. 

Till within a year or two we have been as dis- 



206 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

tant and obscure to the eyes of Europe as Ecuador 
to our own. Every day brings us nearer, enables 
us to see the Old World more clearly, and by 
inevitable comparison to judge ourselves with some 
closer approach to our real value. This has its 
advantage so long as our culture is, as for a long 
time it must be, European ; for we shall be little 
better than apes and parrots till we are forced to 
measure our muscle with the trained and prac- 
ticed champions of that elder civilization. We 
have at length established our claim to the noblesse 
of the sword, the first step still of every nation 
that would make its entry into the best society of 
history. To maintain ourselves there, we must 
achieve an equality in the more exclusive circle of 
culture, and to that end must submit ourselves to 
the European standard of intellectual weights and 
measures. That we have made the hitherto big- 
gest gun might excite apprehension (were there a 
dearth of iron) but can never exact respect. That 
our pianos and patent reapers have won medals 
does naught but confirm us in our mechanic and 
material measure of merit. We must contribute 
something more than mere contrivances for the 
saving of labor, which we have been only too ready 
to misapply in the domain of thought and the 
higher kinds of invention. In those Olympic 
games where nations contend for truly immortal 
wreaths, it may well be questioned whether a 
mowing machine would stand much chance in the 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 207 

chariot-races, — whether a piano, though made by 
a chevalier, could compete successfully for the prize 
of music.i 

We shall have to be content for a good while 
yet with our provincialism, and must strive to 
make the best of it. In it lies the germ of nation- 
ality, and that is, after all, the prime condition of 
all thoroughbred greatness of character. To this 
choicest fruit of a healthy life, well rooted in 
native soil, and drawing prosperous juices thence, 
nationality gives the keenest flavor. Mr. Lincoln 
was an original man, and in so far a great man ; 
yet it was the Americanism of his every thought, 
word, and act which not only made his influence 
equally at home in East and West, but drew the 
eyes of the outside world, and was the pedestal 
that lifted him where he could be seen by them. 
Lincoln showed that native force may transcend 
local boundaries, but the growth of such nation- 
ality is hindered and hampered by our division 
into so many half-independent communities, each 
with its objects of county ambition, and its public 
men great to the borders of their district. In this 
way our standard of greatness is insensibly debased. 
To receive any national appointment, a man must 
have gone through precisely the worst training for 
it ; he must have so far narrowed and belittled 
himself with State politics as to be acceptable at 
home. In this way a man may become chairman 

1 Quite as good reading in 1902 as in 1869. 



208 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, because he 
knows how to pack a caucus in Catawampus 
County, or be sent ambassador to Barataria, be- 
cause he has drunk bad whisky with every voter 
in Wildcat City. Should we ever attain to a con- 
scious nationality, it will have the advantage of 
lessening the number of our great men, and widen- 
ing our appreciation to the larger scale of the two 
or three that are left, — if there should be so 
many. Meanwhile we offer a premium to the 
production of great men in a small way, by invit- 
ing each State to set up the statues of two of its 
immortals in the Capitol. What a niggardly per- 
centage ! Already we are embarrassed, not to 
find the two, but to choose among the crowd of 
candidates. Well, seventy-odd heroes in about as 
many years is pretty well for a young nation. We 
do not envy most of them their eternal martyrdom 
in marble, their pillory of indiscrimination. We 
fancy even native tourists pausing before the 
greater part of the effigies, and, after reading the 
names, asking desperately, '-' Who was he ? " Nay, 
if they should say, " Who the devil was he ? " it 
were a pardonable invocation, for none so fit as 
the Prince of Darkness to act as cicerone among 
such palpable obscurities. We recall the court- 
yard of the Uffizi at Florence. That also is 
not free of parish celebrities ; but Dante, Galileo, 
Michael Angelo, Macchiavelli, — shall the inventor 
of the sewing-machine, even with the button-holing 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 209 

improvement, let us say, match with these, or with 
far lesser than these ? Perhaps he was more prac- 
tically useful than any one of these, or all of them 
together, but the soul is sensible of a sad difference 
somewhere. These also were citizens of a provin- 
cial capital ; so were the greater part of Plutarch's 
heroes. Did they have a better chance than we 
moderns, — than we Americans? At any rate they 
have the start of us, and we must confess that 

" By bed and table they lord it o'er us, 
Our elder brothers, but one in blood." 

Yes, one in blood ; that is the hardest part of it. 
Is our provincialism then in some great measure 
due to our absorption in the practical, as we politely 
call it, meaning the material, — to our habit of 
estimating greatness by the square mile and the 
hundred weight ? Even during our war, in the 
midst of that almost unrivalled stress of soul, 
were not our speakers and newspapers so enslaved 
to the vulgar habit as to boast ten times of the 
thousands of square miles it covered with armed 
men, for once that they alluded to the motive that 
gave it all its meaning and its splendor ? Per- 
haps it was as well that they did not exploit that 
passion of patriotism as an advertisement in the 
style of Barnum or Perham. " I scale one hun- 
dred and eighty pounds, but when I'm mad I 
weigh two ton," said the Kentuckian, with a true 
notion of moral avoirdupois. That ideal kind of 



210 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

weight is wonderfully increased by a national feel- 
ing, whereby one man is conscious that thirty 
millions of men go into the balance with him. 
The Roman in ancient, and the Englishman in 
modern times, have been most conscious of this 
representative solidity, and wherever one of them 
went there stood Rome or England in his shoes. 
We have made some advance in the right direc- 
tion. Our civil war, by the breadth of its pro- 
portions and the implacability of its demands, 
forced us to admit a truer valuation, and gave 
us, in our own despite, great soldiers and sailors, 
allowed for such by all the world. The harder prob- 
lems it has left behind may in time compel us to 
have great statesmen, with views capable of reach- 
ing beyond the next election. The criticism of 
Europe alone can rescue us from the provincialism 
of an over or false estimate of ourselves. Let us 
be thankful, and not angry, that we must accept it 
as our touchstone. Our stamp has so often been 
impressed upon base metal, that we cannot expect 
it to be taken on trust, but we may be sure that 
true gold will be equally persuasive the world 
over. Real manhood and honest achievement are 
nowhere provincial, but enter the select society of 
all time on an even footing. 

Spanish America might be a good glass for us 
to look into. Those Catharine- wheel republics, 
always in revolution while the powder lasts, and 
sure to burn the fingers of whoever attempts inter- 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 211 

vention, have also their great men, as placidly 
ignored bj^ us as our own by jealous Europe. 
The following passage from the life of Don Simon 
Bolivar might allay many motus animorum^ if 
rightly pondered. Bolivar, then a youth, was 
traveling in Italy, and his biographer tells us 
that "near Castiglione he was present at the 
grand review made by Napoleon of the columns 
defiling into the plain large enough to contain 
sixty thousand men. The throne was situated on 
an eminence that overlooked the plain, and Napo- 
leon on several occasions looked through a glass 
at Bolivar and his companions, who were at the 
base of the hill. The hero Ci^sar could not 
imagine that he beheld the liberator of the world 
of Columbus ! " And small blame to him, one 
would say. We are not, then, it seems, the only 
foundling of Columbus, as we are so apt to take 
for granted. The great Genoese did not, as we 
supposed, draw that first star-guided furrow across 
the vague of waters with a single eye to the future 
greatness of the United States. And have we not 
sometimes, like the enthusiastic biographer, fancied 
the Old World staring through all its telescopes at 
us, and wondered that it did not recognize in us 
what we were fully persuaded we were going to be 
and do ? 

Our American life is dreadfully barren of those 
elements of the social picturesque which give 
piquancy to anecdote. And without anecdote, 



212 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

what is biography, or even history, which is only 
biography on a larger scale ? Clio,^ though she 
take airs on herself, and pretend to be "- philoso- 
phy teaching by example," is, after all, but 
a gossip who has borrowed Fame's speaking- 
trumpet, and should be figured with a teacup in- 
stead of a scroll in her hand. How much has she 
not owed of late to the tittle-tattle of her gillflirt 
sister Thalia ? ^ In what gutters has not Macaulay 
raked for the brilliant bits with which he has put 
together his admirable mosaic picture of England 
under the last two Stuarts ? Even Mommsen him- 
self, who dislikes Plutarch's method as. much as 
Montaigne loved it, cannot get or give a lively 
notion of ancient Rome, without running to the 
comic poets and the anecdote-mongers. He gives 
us the very beef-tea of history, nourishing and 
even palatable enough, excellently portable for a 
memory that must carry her own packs, and can 
afford little luggage ; but for our own part, we 
prefer a full, old-fashioned meal, with its side- 
dishes of spicy gossip, and its last relish, the 
Stilton of scandal, so it be not too high. One 
volume of contemporary memoirs, stuffed though 
it be with lies (for lies to be good for anything 
must have a potential probability, must even be 
true so far as their moral and social setting is con- 
cerned), will throw more light into the dark back- 
ward of time than the gravest Camden or Thuanus. 

1 The Muse of History. 2 The Muse of Gaiety and Comedy. 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 218 

If St. Simon is not accurate, is he any the less 
essentially true ? No history gives us so clear an 
understanding of the moral condition of average 
men after the restoration of the Stuarts as the 
unconscious blabbings of the Puritan tailor's son,^ 
with his two consciences, as it were, — an inward, 
still sensitive in spots, though mostly toughened 
to India-rubber, and good rather for rubbing out 
old scores than retaining them, and an outward, 
alert, and termagantly effective in Mrs. Pepys. 
But we can have no St. Simons or Pepyses till we 
have a Paris or London to delocalize our gossip 
and give it historic breadth. All our capitals are 
fractional, merely greater or smaller gatherings of 
men, centers of business rather than of action or 
influence. Each contains so many souls, but is 
not, as the word '' capital " implies, the true head 
of a community and seat of its common soul. 

Has not life itself perhaps become a little more 
prosaic than it once was? As the clearing away 
of the woods scants the streams, may not our 
civilization have dried up some feeders that 
helped to swell the current of individual and 
personal force ? We have sometimes thought 
that the stricter definition and consequent seclu- 
sion from each other of the different callings in 
modern times, as it narrowed the chance of devel- 
oping and giving variety to character, lessened 
also the interest of biography. Formerly arts and 

1 Samuel Pepys, the writer of a famous Diary. 



214 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

arms were not divided by so impassable a barrier 
as now. There was hardly such a thing as a 
pekin,^ Caesar gets up from writing his Latin 
Grammar to conquer Gaul, change the course of 
history, and make so many things possible, — 
among the rest our English language and Shake- 
speare. Horace had been a colonel ; and from 
jEschylus, who fought at Marathon, to Ben Jonson, 
who trailed a pike in the Low Countries, the list 
of martial civilians is a long one. A man's educa- 
tion seems more complete who has smelt hostile 
powder from a less aesthetic distance than Goethe. 
It raises our confidence in Sir Kenelm Digby as a 
physicist, that he is able to illustrate some theory of 
acoustics in his '' Treatise of Bodies" by instancing 
the effect of his guns in a sea-fight off Scanderoon. 
One would expect the proportions of character to 
be enlarged by such variety and contrast of experi- 
ence. Perhaps it will by and by appear that our 
own Civil War has done something for us in this 
w^ay. Colonel Higginson^ comes down from his 
pulpit to draw on his jack-boots, and thenceforth 
rides in our imagination alongside of John Bunyan 
and Bishop Compton. To have stored moral 
capital enough to meet the drafts of Death at 
sight, must be an unmatched tonic. We saw our 
light-hearted youth come back with the modest 

1 A soldier's semi-contemptuous term for a civilian. 

2 Thomas Wentworth Higginson was colonel of one of the first 
colored regiments enlisted in the Civil War. 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 215 

gravity of age, as if they had fearned to throw out 
pickets against a surprise of any weak point in 
their temperament. Perhaps that American shifti- 
ness, so often complained of, may not be so bad a 
thing, if, by bringing men acquainted with every 
humor of fortune and human nature, it puts them 
in fuller possession of themselves. 

But with whatever drawbacks in special circum- 
stances, the main interest of biography must always 
lie in the amount of character or essential manhood 
which the subject of it reveals to us, and events 
are of import only as means to that end. It is 
true that lofty and far-seen exigencies may give 
greater opportunity .to some men, whose energy 
is more sharply spurred by the shout of a multi- 
tude than by the grudging Well done! of con- 
science. Some theorists have too hastily assumed 
that, as the power of public opinion increases, the 
force of private character, or what we call original- 
ity, is absorbed into and diluted by it. But we 
think Horace was right in putting tyrant and mob 
on a level as the trainers and tests of a man's solid 
quality. The amount of resistance of which one 
is capable to whatever lies outside the conscience, 
is of more consequence than all other faculties 
together ; and democracy, perhaps, tries this by 
pressure in more directions, and with a more con- 
tinuous strain, than any other form of society. In 
Josiah Quincy we haVe an example of character 
trained and shaped, under the nearest approach to 



216 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

a pure democracy £he world has ever seen, to a 
firmness, unity, and self-centered poise that recall 
the finer types of antiquity, in whom the public 
and private man were so wholly of a piece that 
they were truly everywhere at home, for the same 
sincerity of nature that dignified the hearth carried 
also a charm of homeliness into the forum. The 
phrase '' a great public character," once common, 
seems to be going out of fashion, perhaps because 
there are fewer examples of the thing. It fits 
Josiah Quincy exactly. Active in civic and aca- 
demic duties till beyond the ordinary period of 
man, at fourscore and ten his pen, voice, and ven- 
erable presence were still efficient in public affairs. 
A score of years after the energies of even vigor- 
ous men are declining or spent, his mind and 
character made themselves felt as in their prime. 
A true pillar of house and state, he stood unflinch- 
ingly upright under whatever burden might be 
laid upon him. The French Revolutionists aped 
what was itself but a parody of the elder republic, 
with their hair a la Brutus and their pedantic 
moralities a la Cato Minor, but this man uncon- 
sciously was the antique Roman they laboriously 
went about to be. Others have filled places more 
conspicuous, few have made the place they filled 
so conspicuous by an exact and disinterested per- 
formance of duty. 

In the biography of Mr. Quincy by his son there 
is something of the provincialism of which we have 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 217 

spoken as inherent in most American works of the 
kind. His was a Boston life in the strictest sense. 
But provincialism is relative, and where it has a 
flavor of its own, as in Scotland, it is often agree- 
able in proportion to its very intensity. The 
Massachusetts in which Mr. Quincy's habits of 
thought were acquired was a very different Massa- 
chusetts from that in which we of later generations 
have been bred. Till after he had passed middle 
life, Boston was more truly a capital than any other 
city in America, before or since, except possibly 
Charleston. The acknowledged head of New 
England, with a population of well-nigh purely 
English descent, mostlj^ derived from the earlier 
emigration, with ancestral traditions and inspiring 
memories of its own, it had made its name familiar 
in both worlds, and was both historically and polit- 
ically more important than at any later period. 
The Revolution had not interrupted, but rather 
given a freer current to the tendencies of its past. 
Both by its history and position, the town had 
what the French call a solidarity, an almost per- 
sonal consciousness, rare anywhere, rare especially 
in America, and more than ever since our enor- 
mous importation of fellow-citizens to whom Amer- 
ica means merely shop, or meat three times a day. 
Boston has been called the '' American Athens." 
^sthetically, the comparison is ludicrous, but 
politically it was moi^e reasonable. Its population 
was homogeneous, and there were leading families ; 



218 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

while the form of government by town-meeting, 
and the facility of social and civic intercourse, 
gave great influence to popular personal qualities 
and opportunity to new men. A wide commerce, 
while it had insensibly softened the asperities of 
Puritanism and imported enough foreign refine- 
ment to humanize, not enough foreign luxury to 
corrupt, had not essentially qualified the native 
tone of the town. Retired sea-captains (true 
brothers of Chaucer's Shipman) whose exploits 
had kindled the imagination of Burke, added a 
not unpleasant savor of salt to society. They 
belonged to the old school of Gilbert, Hawkins, 
Frobisher, and Drake, parcel -soldiers all of them, 
who had commanded armed ships and had tales to 
tell of gallant fights with privateers or pirates, 
truest representatives of those Vikings who, if 
trade in lumber or peltry was dull, would make 
themselves Dukes of Dublin or Earls of Orkney. 
If trade pinches the mind, commerce liberalizes 
it; and Boston was also advantaged with the 
neighborhood of the country's oldest College, 
which maintained the wholesome traditions of 
culture, — where Homer and Horace are familiar 
there is a certain amount of cosmopolitanism, — 
and would not allow bigotry to become despotism. 
Manners were more self-respectful, and therefore 
more respectful of others, and personal sensitive- 
ness was fenced with more of that ceremonial with 
which society armed itself when it surrendered the 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 219 

ruder protection of the sword. We had not then 
seen a Governor in his chamber at the State-house 
with his hat on, a cigar in his mouth, and his feet 
upon the stove. Domestic service, in spite of the 
proverb, was not seldom an inheritance, nor was 
household peace dependent on the whim of a 
foreign armed neutrality in the kitchen. Servant 
and master were of one stock; there was decent 
authority and becoming respect ; the tradition of 
the Old World lingered after its superstition had 
passed away. There was an aristocracy such as 
is healthful in a well-ordered community, founded 
on public service, and hereditary so long as the 
virtue which was its patent was not escheated. 
The clergy, no longer hedged by the reverence 
exacted by sacerdotal caste, were more than repaid 
by the consideration willingly paid to superior 
culture. What changes, many of them for the 
better, some of them surely for the worse, and all 
of them inevitable, did not Josiah Quincy see in 
that well-nigh secular life which linked the war of 
independence to the war of nationality ! We 
seemed to see a type of them the other day in a 
colored man standing with an air of comfortable 
self-possession while his boots were brushed by a 
youth of catholic neutral tint, but whom nature 
had planned for white. The same eyes that had 
looked on Gage's redcoats, saw Colonel Shaw's 
negro regiment march out of Boston in the national 
blue. Seldom has a life, itself actively associated 



220 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

with public affairs, spanned so wide a chasm for 
the imagination. Oglethorpe's offers a parallel, 
— the aid-de-camp of Prince Eugene calling on 
John Adams, American Ambassador to England. 
Most long lives resemble those threads of gos- 
samer, the nearest approach to nothing unmean- 
ingly prolonged, scarce visible pathway of some 
worm from his cradle to his grave ; but Quincy's 
was strung with seventy active years, each one a 
rounded bead of usefulness and service. 

Mr. Quincy was a Bostonian of the purest type. 
Since the settlement of the town, there had been a 
colonel of the Boston regiment in every generation 
of his family. He lived to see a grandson bre- 
vetted with the same title for gallantry in the 
field. Only child of one among the most eminent 
advocates of the Revolution, and who but for his 
untimely death would have been a leading actor in 
it, his earliest recollections belonged to the heroic 
period in the history of his native town. With 
that history his life was thenceforth intimately 
united by offices of public trust, as Representative 
in Congress, State Senator, Maj^or, and President 
of the University, to a period beyond the ordinary 
span of mortals. Even after he had passed ninety, 
he would not claim to be emeritus^ but came for- 
ward to brace his townsmen with a courage and 
warm them with a fire younger than their own. 
The legend of Colonel Goffe at Deerfield became a 
reality to the eyes of this generation. The New 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 221 

England breed is running out, we are told ! This 
was in all ways a beautiful and fortunate life, — 
fortunate in the goods of this world, — fortunate, 
above all, in the force of character which makes 
fortune secondary and subservient. We are fond 
in this country of what are called self-made men 
(as if real success could ever be other); and this 
is all very well, provided they make something 
worth having of themselves. Otherwise it is not 
so well, and the examples of such are at best but 
stuff for the Alnaschar dreams of a false democracy. 
The gist of the matter is, not where a man starts 
from, but where he comes out. We are glad to 
have the biography of one who, beginning as a 
gentleman, kept himself such to the end, — who, 
with no necessity of labor, left behind him an 
amount of thoroughly done work such as few have 
accomplished with the mighty help of hunger. 
Some kind of pace may be got out of the veriest 
jade by the near prospect of oats; but the thor- 
oughbred has the spur in his blood. 

In the remainder of his essay, Lowell gives us something of a 
sketch of the life of Josiah Quincy, following along the diary of 
which he excellently says: " Thus many a door into the past, long 
irrevocably shut on us, is set ajar, and we of the younger genera- 
tion on the landing catch peeps of distinguished men, and bits of 
their table talk." We of a generation younger still will like the 
glimpses of Washington, of Hancock, of Adams, and Ave could 
hardly have any one better than Lowell to give us an account 
of what he thought most entertaining. The style of the diary 
itself is vigorous and not unattractive. '* It needs the magic of no 
Dr. Heidegger," writes Lowell, thinking of one of Hawthorne's 
stories, **to make these dried roses that drop from between a 



222 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

volume shut for seventy years bloom again in all their sweetness." 
That is a pretty figure, very much in Lowell's best vein, and there 
are two or three more in the essay which follows through the 
career of Josiah Quincy, through various distinguished positions, 
'' a figure that w^e can contemplate with more than satisfaction, — 
a figure of admirable example in a democracy as that of a model 
citizen." 



FROM "ESSAYS: FIRST SERIES" 



HISTORY 

'' There is no great and no small 
To the Soul that maketh all : 
And where it cometh, all things are ; 
And it cometh everywhere." 

There is one mind common to all individual 
men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to 
all of the same. He that is once admitted to the 
right of reason is made a freeman of the whole 
estate. What Plato has thought, he may think ; 
what a saint has felt, he may feel ; what at any 
time has befallen any man, he can understand. 
Who hath access to this universal mind, is a party 
to all that is or can be done, for this is the only 
and sovereign agent. 

Of the works of this mind history is the record. 
Its genius is illustrated by the entire series of 
days. Man is explicable by nothing less than all 
his history. Without hurry, without rest, the 
human spirit goes forth from the beginning to 
embody every faculty, every thought, every emo- 

223 



224 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

tioii, which belongs to it in appropriate events. 
But always the thought is prior to the fact ; all 
the facts of history preexist in the mind as laws. 
Each law in turn is made by circumstances pre- 
dominant, and the limits of nature give power to 
but one at a time. A man is the whole encyclo- 
pedia of facts. The creation of a thousand forests 
is in one acorn, and Egypt, Greece, Rome, Gaul, 
Britain, America, lie folded already in the first 
man. Epoch after epoch, camp, kingdom, empire, 
republic, democracy, are merely the application of 
his manifold spirit to the manifold world. 

This human mind wrote historv and this must 
read it. The Sphinx must solve her own riddle. 
If the whole of history is in one man, it is all to 
be explained from individual experience. There 
is a relation between the hours of our life and the 
centuries of time. As the air I breathe is drawn 
from the great repositories of nature, as the light 
on my book is yielded by a star a hundred millions 
of miles distant, as the poise of my body depends 
on the equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal 
forces, so the hours should be instructed by the 
ages, and the ages explained by the hours. Of 
the universal mind each individual man is one 
more incarnation. All its properties consist in 
him. Every step in liis private experience flashes 
a light on what great bodies of men have done, 
and the crises of his life refer to national crises. 
Every revolution was first a thought in one man's 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 225 

mind, and when the same thought occurs to another 
man, it is the key to that era. Every reform was 
once a private opinion, and w^hen it shall be pri- 
vate opinion again, it will solve the problem of the 
age. The fact narrated must correspond to some- 
thing in me to be credible or intelligible. We as 
we read must become Greeks, Romans, Turks, 
priest, and king, martyr and executioner, must 
fasten these images to some reality in our secret 
experience, or we shall see nothing, learn nothing, 
keep nothing. What befell Asdrubal or Caesar 
Borgia, is as much an illustration of the mind's 
powers and depravations as what has befallen us. 
Each new law and political movement has meaning 
for you. Stand before each of its tablets and say, 
'' Here is one of my coverings. Under this fan- 
tastic, or odious, or graceful mask, did my Proteus 
nature hide itself." This remedies the defect of 
our too great nearness to ourselves. This throws 
our own actions into perspective : and as crabs, 
goats, scorpions, the balance and the waterpot, lose 
all their meanness^ when hung as signs in the 
zodiac, so I can see my own vices without heat in 
the distant persons of Solomon, Alcibiades, and 
Catiline. 

It is this universal nature which gives worth to 
particular men and things. Human life as con- 
taining this is mysterious and inviolable, and we 
hedge it round with'penalties and laws. All laws 

1 Commonplace, ordinary character. 
Q 



226 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

derive hence their ultimate reason, all express at 
last reverence for some command of their supreme 
illimitable essence. Property also holds of the 
soul, covers great spiritual facts, and instinctively 
we at first hold to it with swords and laws, and 
wide and complex combinations. The obscure 
consciousness of this fact is the light of all our 
day, the claim of claims ; the plea for education, 
for justice, for charity, the foundation of friend- 
ship and love, and of the heroism and grandeur 
which belongs to acts of self-reliance. It is re- 
markable that involuntarily we always read as 
superior beings. Universal history, the poets, the 
romancers, do not in their stateliest pictures, — 
in the sacerdotal, the imperial palaces, in the tri- 
umphs of will, or of genius, anywhere lose our 
ear, anywhere make us feel that we intrude, that 
this is for our betters, but rather is it true that 
in their grandest strokes, there we feel most at 
home. All that Shakespeare says of the king, 
yonder slip of a boy that reads in the corner, 
feels to be true of himself. We sympathize in 
the great moments o'f history, in the great discov- 
eries, the great resistances, the great prosperities 
of men ; because there law was enacted, the sea 
was searched, the land was found, or the blow 
was struck for us^ as we ourselves in that place 
would have done or applauded. 

So is it in respect to condition and character. 
We honor the rich because they have externally 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 227 

the freedom, power, and grace which we feel to 
be proper to man, proper to us. So all that is 
said of the wise man by stoic ^ or oriental or mod- 
ern essayist, describes to each man his own idea, 
describes his unattained but attainable self. All 
literature writes the character of the wise man. 
All books, monuments, pictures, conversation, are 
portraits in which the wise man finds the linea- 
ments he is forming. The silent and the loud 
praise him, and accost him, and he is stimulated 
wherever he moves as by personal allusions. A 
wise and good soul, therefore, never needs look 
for allusions personal and laudatory in discourse. 
He hears the commendation, not of himself, but 
more sweet, of that character he seeks, in every 
word that is said concerning character, yea, 
further, in every fact that befalls, — in the run- 
ning river, and the rustling corn. Praise is 
looked, homage tendered, love flows from mute 
nature, from the mountains and the lights of the 
firmament. 

These hints, dropped as it were from sleep and 
night, let us use in broad day. The student is to 
read history actively and not passively ; to esteem 
his own life the text, and -books the commentary. 
Thus compelled, the muse of history will utter 
oracles, as never to those who do not respect 
themselves. I have no expectation that any man 
will read history aright, who thinks that what 

1 Classic philosophy, speaking generally. 



228 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

was done in a remote age, by men whose names 
have resounded far, has any deeper sense than 
what he is doing to-day. 

The world exists for the education of each man. 
There is no age or state of society or mode of 
action in history, to which there is not somewhat 
corresponding in his life. Everything tends in a 
most wonderful manner to abbreviate itself and 
yield its whole virtue to him. He should see 
that he can live all history in his own person. 
He must sit at home with might and main, and 
not suffer himself to be bullied by kings and em- 
pires, but know that he is greater than all the 
geography and all the government of the world ; 
he must transfer the point of view from which 
history is commonly read, from Rome and Athens 
and London to himself, and not deny his convic- 
tion that he is the Court,^ and if England or Egypt 
have anything to say to him, he will try the case ; 
if not, let them forever be silent. He must attain 
and maintain that lofty sight where facts yield 
their secret sense, and poetry and annals are alike. 
The instinct of the mind, the purpose of nature, 
betrays itself in the use we make of the signal 
narrations of history. Time dissipates to shining 
ether the solid angularity of facts. No anchor, no 
cable, no fences avail to keep a fact a fact. Baby- 
lon and Troy and Tyre and even early Rome are 
passing already into fiction. The garden of Eden, 

1 For himself, the only judge. 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 229 

the Sun standing still in Gibeon, is poetry thence- 
forward to all nations. Who cares what the fact 
was, when we have thus made a constellation of 
it to hang in heaven an immortal sign ? London 
and Paris and New York must go the same way. 
" What is History," said Napoleon, '' but a fable 
agreed upon ? " This life of ours is stuck round ^ 
with Egypt, Greece, Gaul, England, War, Coloni- 
zation, Church, Court, and Commerce, as with so 
many flowers and wild ornaments, grave and gay. 
I will not make more account of them. I believe 
in Eternity. I can find Greece, Palestine, Italy, 
Spain, and the Islands, — the genius and creative 
principle of each and of all areas in my own 
mind. 

We are always coming up with the facts that 
have moved us in history in our private experi- 
ence, and verifying them here. All history 
becomes subjective ; in other words, there is 
properly no History ; only Biography. Every 
soul must know the whole lesson for itself — must 
go over the whole ground. What it does not see, 
what it does not live, it will not know. What 
the former age has epitomized into a formula or 
rule for manipular convenience, it will lose all the 
good of verifying for itself, by means of the wall 
of that rule. Somewhere or other, some time or 
other, it will demand and find compensation for 
that loss by doing the work itself. Ferguson dis- 

1 So that we can hardly see the real thing for the ornaments. 



230 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

covered many things in astronomy which had long 
been known. The better for him. 

History must be this or it is nothing. Every 
law which the state enacts, indicates a fact in 
human nature ; that is all. We must in our own 
natures see the necessary reason for every fact — 
see how it could and must be. So stand before 
every public, every private work ; before an ora- 
tion of Burke, before a victory of Napoleon, 
before a martyrdom of Sir Thomas More, of Sid- 
ney, of Marmaduke Robinson, before a French 
Reign of Terror, and a Salem hanging of witches, 
before a fanatic Revival, and the Animal Magnet- 
ism ^ in Paris, or in Providence. We assume that 
we under like influence should be alike affected, 
and should achieve the like ; and we aim to 
master intellectually the steps, and reach the same 
height or the same degradation that our fellow, 
our proxy has done. 

All inquiry into antiquity, — all curiosity re- 
specting the pyramids, the excavated cities, — 
Stonehenge, the Ohio Circles,^ Mexico, Memphis, 
is the desire to do away this wild, savage, and pre- 
posterous There and Then, and introduce in its 
place the Here and the Now. It is to banish the 
]}^ot me^ and supply the Me, It is to abolish dif- 
ference and restore unity. Belzoni digs and meas- 

1 The name given by Mesmer to a series of phenomena, even now 
only partly understood, of which the hypnotic element is the best 
known. 

2 The Mounds. 



AMEBIC AN ESSAYS 231 

ures in the mummy-pits and pyramids of Thebes, 
until he can see the end of the difference between 
the monstrous work and himself. When he has 
satisfied himself, in general and in detail, that it 
was made by -such a person as himself, so armed 
and so motived, and to ends to which he himself 
in given circumstances should also have worked, 
the problem is then solved ; his thought lives 
along the whole line of temples and sphinxes and 
catacombs, passes through them all like a creative 
soul, with satisfaction, and they live again to the 
mind, or are now, 

A Gothic cathedral affirms that it was done by 
us, and not done by us. Surely it was by man, 
but we find it not in our man. But we apply 
ourselves to the history of its production. We 
put ourselves into the place and historical state of 
the builder. We remember the forest dwellers, 
the first temples, the adherence to the first type, 
and the decoration of it as the wealth of the 
nation increased ; the value which is given to 
wood by carving led to the carving over the 
whole mountain of stone of a cathedral. When 
we have gone through this process, and added 
thereto the Catholic Church, its cross, its music, 
its processions, its Saints' days, and image-worship, 
we have, as it were, been the man that made the 
minster ; we have seen how it could and must be. 
We have the sufficient reason. 

The difference between men is in their princi- 



232 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

pie of association. Some men classify objects by 
color and size and other accidents of appearance ; 
others by intrinsic likeness, or by the relation of 
cause and effect. The progress of the intellect 
consists in the clearer vision of causes which over- 
looks surface differences. To the poet, to the 
philosopher, to the saint, all things are fiiendly 
and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all 
men divine. For the eye is fastened on the life, 
and slights the circumstance. Every chemical 
substance, every plant, every animal in its growth, 
teaches the unity of cause, the variety of ap- 
pearance. 

Why, being as we are surrounded by this all- 
creating nature, soft and fluid as a cloud or the 
air, should we be such hard pedants, and magnify 
a few forms ? Why should we make account of 
time, or of magnitude, or of form ? The soul 
knows them not, and genius, obeying its law, 
knows how to play with them as a young child 
plays with graybeards and in churches. Genius 
studies the casual thought, and far back in the 
womb of things, sees the rays parting from one 
orb, that diverge ere they fall by infinite diame- 
ters. Genius watches the monad through all his 
masks as he performs the metempsychosis of 
nature. Genius detects through the flj^, through 
the caterpillar, through the grub, through the 
egg^ the constant type of the individual ; through 
countless individuals the fixed species ; through 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 233 

many species the genus ; through all genera the 
steadfast type; through all the kmgdoms of or- 
ganized life the eternal unity. Nature is a muta- 
ble cloud, which is always, and never the same. 
She casts the same thought into troops of forms, 
as a poet makes twenty fables with one moral. 
Beautifully shines a spirit through the bruteness 
and toughness of matter. Alone omnipotent, it 
converts all things to its own end. The adamant 
streams into softest but precise form before it, 
but, whilst I look at it, its outline and texture 
are changed altogether. Nothing is so fleeting 
as form. Yet never does it quite deny itself. 
In man we still trace the rudiments or hints of 
all that we esteem badges of servitude in the 
lower races, yet in him they enhance his noble- 
ness and grace ; as lo, in ^schylus, transformed 
to a cow, offends the imagination, but how 
changed when an Isis in Egypt she meets Jove, 
a beautiful woman, with nothing of the meta- 
morphosis left but the lunar horns as the splen- 
did ornament of her brows. 

The identity of history is equally intrinsic, the 
diversity equally obvious. There is at the surface 
infinite variety of things ; at the center there is 
simplicity and unity of cause. How many are the 
acts of one man in which we recognize the same 
character. See the variety of the sources of our 
information in respect to the Greek genius. Thus 
at first we have the civil history of that people, as 



234 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch have 
given it — a very sufficient account of what manner 
of persons they were, and what they did. Then we 
have the same soul expressed for us again in their 
literature ; in poems, drama, and philosophy : a 
very complete form. Then we have it once more in 
their architecture — the purest sensuous beauty — 
the perfect medium never overstepping the limit 
of charming propriety and grace. Then we have 
it once more in sculpture — '' the tongue on the bal- 
ance of expression," those forms in every action, 
at every age of life ranging through all the scale 
of condition, from god to beast, and never trans- 
gressing the ideal of serenity, but in convulsive ex- 
ertion^ the liege of order and of law. Thus, of the 
genius of one remarkable people, we have a four- 
fold representation — the most various expression 
of one moral thing : and to the senses what more 
unlike than an ode of Pindar, a marble Centaur, 
the peristyle of the Parthenon, and the last actions 
of Phocian ? Yet do these varied external expres- 
sions proceed from one national mind. 

Every one must have observed faces and forms 
which, without any resembling feature, make a 
like impression on the beholder. A particular 
picture or copy of verses, if it do not awaken the 
same train of images, will yet superinduce the same 
sentiment as some wild mountain walk, although 

1 As for instance in the statue of the Discus-thrower. Emerson 
more probably has in mind the Laocoon. 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 235 

the resemblance is nowise obvious to the senses, 
but is occult and out of the reach of the under- 
standing. Nature is an endless combination and 
repetition of a very few laws. She hums the old 
well-known air through innumerable variations. 

Nature is full of a sublime family likeness 
throughout her works. She delights in startling 
us with resemblances in the most unexpected 
quarters. I have seen the head of an old sachem 
of the forest, which at once reminded the eye of 
a bald mountain summit, and the furrows of the 
brow suggested the strata of the rock. There 
are men whose manners have the same essential 
splendor as the simple and awful sculpture on 
the friezes of the Parthenon, and the remains of 
the earliest Greek art. And there are composi- 
tions of the same strain to be found in the books 
of all ages. What is Guido's Rospigliosi Aurora 
but a morning thought, as the horses in it are 
only a morning cloud. If any one will but take 
pains to observe the variety of actions to which 
he is equally inclined in certain moods of mind, 
and those to which he is averse, he will see how 
deep is the chain of affinity. 

A painter told me that nobody could draw a 
tree without in some sort becoming . a tree ; or 
draw a child by studying the outlines of its form 
merely, — but, by watching for a time his motions 
and plays, the painter enters into his nature, and 
can then draw him at will in every attitude. So 



236 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

Roos '' entered into the utmost nature of a sheep." 
I knew a draughtsman employed in a public sur- 
vey, who found that he could not sketch the rocks 
until their geological structure was first explained 
to him. 

What is to be inferred from these facts but 
this, that in a certain state of thought is the 
common origin of very diverse works ? It is the 
spirit and not the fact that is identical. By de- 
scending far down into the depths of the soul, 
and not primarily by a painful acquisition of 
many manual skills, the artist attains the power 
of awakening other souls to a given activity. 

It has been said that " common souls pay with 
what they do ; nobler souls with that which they 
are." And why? Because a soul, living from 
a great depth of being, awakens in us by its ac- 
tions and words, by its very looks and manners, 
the same power and beauty that a gallery of sculp- 
ture, or of pictures, are wont to animate. 

Civil history, natural history, the history of art, 
and the history of literature — all must be ex- 
plained from individual history, or must remain 
words. There is nothing but is related to us, 
nothing that does not interest us — kingdom, col- 
lege, tree, horse, or iron shoe, the roots of all 
things are in man. It is in the soul that archi- 
tecture exists. Santa Croce^ and the Dome of 
St. Peter's are lame copies after a divine model. 

1 A famous church m Florence. 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 237 

Strasburg Cathedral is a material counterpart of 
the soul of Erwin of Steinbach. The true poem 
is the poet's mind ; the true ship is the ship- 
builder. In the man, could we lay him open, 
we should see the sufficient reason for the last 
flourish and tendril of his work, as every spine 
and tint in the sea-shell preexist in the secreting 
organs of the fish. The whole of heraldry and of 
chivalry is in courtesy. A man of fine manners 
shall pronounce your name with all the ornament 
that titles of nobility could ever add. 

The trivial experience of every day is always 
verifying some old prediction to us, and convert- 
ing into things for us also the words and signs 
which we had heard and seen without heed. Let 
me add a few examples, such as fall within the 
scope of every man's observation, of trivial facts 
which go to illustrate great and conspicuous facts. 

A lady, with whom I was riding in the forest, 
said to me, that the woods always seemed to her 
to wait^ as if the genii who inhabit them suspended 
their deeds until the wayfarer had passed onward. 
This is precisely the thought which poetry has 
celebrated in the dance of the fairies which breaks 
off on the approach of human feet. The man who 
has seen the rising moon break out of the clouds 
at midnight, has been present, like an archangel 
at the creation of light and of the world. I 
remember that being' abroad one summer day, my 
companion pointed out to me a broad cloud, which 



238 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

might extend a quarter of a mile parallel to the 
horizon, quite accurately in the form of a cherub 
as painted over churches, — a round block in the 
center which it was easy to animate with eyes and 
mouth, supported on either side by wide stretched 
symmetrical wings. What appears once in the 
atmosphere may appear often, and it was undoubt- 
edly the archetype of that familiar ornament. I 
have seen in the sky a chain of summer lightning 
which at once revealed to me that the Greeks 
drew from nature when they painted the thunder- 
bolt in the hand of Jove. I have seen a snow- 
drift along the sides of the stone wall which 
obviously gave the idea of the common architec- 
tural scroll to abut a tower. 

By simply throwing ourselves into new circum- 
stances we do continually invent anew the orders 
and the ornaments of architecture, as we see how 
each people merely decorated its primitive abodes. 
The Doric temple still presents the semblance 
of the wooden cabin in which the Dorian dwelt. 
The Chinese pagoda is plainly a Tartar tent. 
The Indian and Egyptian temples still betray the 
mounds and subterranean houses of their fore- 
fathers. " The custom of making houses and 
tombs in the living rock " (says Heeren, in his 
" Researches on the Ethiopians " ) " determined 
very naturally the principal character of the Nubian 
Egyptian architecture to the colossal form which 
it assumed. In these caverns already prepared by 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 239 

nature, the eye was accustomed to dwell on huge 
shapes and masses, so that when art came to the 
assistance of nature, it could not move on a 
small scale without degrading itself. What 
would statues of the usual size or neat porches 
and wings have been, associated with those gigan- 
tic halls before which only Colossi could sit as 
watchmen, or lean on the pillars of the interior?" 

The Gothic church plainly originated in a rude 
adaptation of the forest trees with all their boughs 
to a festal or solemn arcade, as the bands about 
the cleft pillars still indicate the green withes 
that tied them. No one can walk in a road cut 
through pine woods, without being struck with 
the architectural appearance of the grove, espe- 
cially in winter, when the bareness of all other 
trees shows the low arch of the Saxons. In the 
woods in a winter afternoon one will see as readily 
the origin of the stained glass window with which 
the Gothic cathedrals are adorned, in the colors 
of the western sky seen through the bare and cross- 
ing branches of the forest. Nor can any lover of 
nature enter the old piles of Oxford and the Eng- 
lish cathedrals without feeling that the forest over- 
powered the mind of the builder, and that his chisel, 
his saw, and plane still reproduced its ferns, its 
spikes of flowers, its locust, its pine, its oak, its 
fir, its spruce. 

The Gothic cathedral is a blossoming in stone 
subdued by the insatiable demand of harmony in 



240 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

man. The mountain of granite blooms into an 
eternal flower with the lightness and delicate 
finish as well as the aerial proportions and per- 
spective of vegetable beauty. 

In like manner all public facts are to be indi- 
vidualized, all private facts are to be generalized. 
Then at once History becomes fluid and true, and 
Biography deep and sublime. As the Persian 
imitated in the slender shafts and capitals of his 
architecture the stem and flower of the lotus and 
palm, so the Persian Court in its magnificent era 
never gave over the Nomadism of its barbarous 
tribes, but traveled from Ecbatana, where the 
spring was spent, to Susa in summer, and to Baby- 
lon for the winter. 

In the early history of Asia and Africa, Nomad- 
ism and Agriculture are the two antagonistic facts. 
The geography of Asia and Africa necessitated a 
nomadic life. But the nomads were the terror of 
all those whom the soil or the advantages of a 
market had induced to build towns. Agriculture, 
therefore, was a religious injunction because of the 
perils of the state from nomadism. And in these 
late and civil countries of England and Africa, the 
contest of these propensities still fights out the old 
battle in each individual. We are all rovers and 
all fixtures by turns, and pretty rapid turns. The 
nomads of Africa are constrained to wander by 
the attacks of the gad-fly, which drives the cattle 
mad, and so compels the tribe to emigrate in the 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 241 

rainy season and drive off the cattle to the higher 
sandy regions. The nomads of Asia follow the 
pasturage from month to month. In America 
and Europe the nomadism is of trade and curi- 
osity. A progress certainly from the gad-fly of 
Astaboras to the Anglo and Italomania of Boston 
Bay.i The difference between men in this respect 
is the faculty of rapid domestication, the power to 
find his chair and bed everywhere, which one man 
has, and another has not. Some men have so 
much of the Indian left, have constitutionally such 
habits of accommodation, that at sea, or in the 
forest, or in the snow, they sleep as warm, and 
dine with as good appetite, and associate as hap- 
pily, as in their own house. And to push this 
old fact still one degree nearer, we may find it 
a representative of a permanent fact in human 
nature, — the intellectual nomadism in the faculty 
of objectiveness or of eyes which everywhere 
feed themselves. Who hath such eyes, every- 
where falls into easy relations with his fellow- 
men. Every man, everything is a prize, a study, 
a property to him, and this love smooths his 
brow, joins him to men and makes him beauti- 
ful and beloved in their sight. His house is a 
wagon ; he roams through all latitudes as easily 
as a Calmuc. 

Everything the individual sees without him 
corresponds to his < states of mind, and every- 

1 The American passion for rushing away to England and Italy. 



242 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

thing is in turn intelligible to him as his on- 
ward thinking leads him into the truth to 
which that act or series belongs. 

The primeval Avorld, the Fore-world, as the 
Germans say, — I can dive to it in myself as well 
as grope for it with researching fingers in cata- 
combs, libraries, and the broken reliefs and torsos 
of ruined villas. 

What is the foundation of that interest all men 
feel in Greek historj^, letters,, art, and poetry, in 
all its periods, from the heroic or Homeric age, 
down to the domestic life of the Athenians and 
Spartans, four or five centuries later ? This 
period draws us because we are Greeks. It is 
a state through which every man in some sort 
passes. The Grecian state is the era of the 
bodily nature, the perfection of the senses, — 
of the spiritual nature unfolded in strict unity 
with the body. In it existed {hose human forms 
which supplied the sculptor with his models of 
Hercules, Phcebus, and Jove; not like the forms 
abounding in the streets of modern cities, wherein 
the face is a confused blur of features, but com- 
posed of incorrupt, sharply defined and symmet- 
rical features, whose eye-sockets are so formed 
that it would be impossible for such eyes to 
squint, and take furtive glances on this side and 
on that, but they must turn the whole head. 

The manners of that period are plain and fierce. 
The reverence exhibited is for personal qualities, 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 243 

courage, address, self-command, justice, strength, 
swiftness, a loud voice, a broad chest. Luxury is 
not known, nor elegance. A sparse population 
and want make every man his own valet, cook, 
butcher, and soldier, and the habit of supplying 
his own needs educates the body to wonderful 
performances. Such are, the Agamemnon and 
Diomed of Homer, and not far different is the 
picture Xenophon gives of himself and his com- 
patriots in the Retreat of the Ten Thousand.^ 
'' After the army had crossed the river Teleboas 
in Armenia, there fell much snow, and the troops 
lay miserably on the ground, covered with it. 
But Xenophon arose naked, and taking an axe, 
began to split wood ; whereupon others rose and 
did the like." Throughout his army seemed to 
be a boundless liberty of speech. They quarrel 
for plunder, they wrangle with the generals on 
each new order, and Xenophon is as sharp-tongued 
as any, and sharper- tongued than most, and so 
gives as good as he gets. Who does not see that 
this is a gang of great boys with such a code of 
honor and such lax discipline as great boys have ? 
The costly charm of the ancient tragedy and 
indeed of all the old literature is, that the persons 
speak simply, — speak as persons who have great 
good sense without knowing it, before yet the 
reflective habit has become the predominant habit 
of the mind. Our admiration of the antique is 

1 The retreat of the Greek mercenaries after the battle of Cimaxa. 



244 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

not admiration of the old, but of the natural. 
The Greeks are not reflective but perfect in their 
senses, perfect in their health, with the finest phys- 
ical organization in the world. Adults acted with 
the simplicity and grace of boys. They made 
vases, tragedies, and statues such as healthy senses 
should, — that is, in good taste. Such things have 
continued to be made in all ages, and are now, 
wherever a healthy physique exists, but, as a 
class, from their superior organization, they have 
surpassed all. They combine the energy of man- 
hood with the engaging unconsciousness of child- 
hood. Our reverence for them is our reverence 
for childhood. Nobody can reflect upon an uncon- 
scious act with regret or contempt. Bard or hero 
cannot look down on the word or gesture of a 
child. It is as great as they. The attraction 
of these manners is, that they belong to man, and 
are known to every man in virtue of his being 
once a child ; beside that always there are indi- 
viduals who retain these characteristics. A per- 
son of childlike genius and inborn energy is still 
a Greek, and revives our love of the muse of 
Hellas. A great boy, a great girl, with good 
sense, is a Greek. Beautiful is the love of nature 
in the " Philoctetes." ^ But in reading those fine 
apostrophes to sleep, to the stars, rocks, moun- 
tains, and waves, I feel time passing away as an 
ebbing sea. I feel the eternity of man, the iden- 

1 Oue of the tragedies of Sophocles. 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 246 

tity of his thought. The Greek had, it seems, 
the same fellow-beings as I. The sun and moon, 
water and fire, met his heart precisely as they 
meet mine. Then the vaunted distinction between 
Greek and English, between classic and romantic 
schools seems superficial and pedantic. When a 
thought of Plato becomes a thought to me, — 
when a truth that fired the soul of Pindar fires 
mine, time is no more. When I feel that we two 
meet in a perception, that our two souls are tinged 
with the same hue, and do, as it were, run into 
one, why should I measure degrees of latitude, 
why should I count Egyptian years? 

The student interprets the age of chivalry by 
his own age of chivalry, and the days of maritime 
adventure and circumnavigation by quite parallel 
miniature experiences of his own. To the sacred 
history of the world, he has the same key. When 
the voice of a prophet out of the deeps of antiquity 
merely echoes to him a sentiment of his infancy, 
a prayer of his youth, he then pierces to the truth 
through all the confusion of tradition and carica- 
ture of institutions. 

Rare, extravagant spirits come by us at inter- 
vals, who disclose to us new facts in nature. I 
see that men of God have always, from time to 
time, walked among men and made their commis- 
sion felt in the heart and soul of the commonest 
hearer. Hence, evidently, the tripod, the priest, 
the priestess inspired by the divine afflatus. 



246 HAWTHOBNE CLASSICS 

Jesus astonishes and overpowers sensual people. 
They cannot unite him to history or reconcile him 
with themselves. As they come to revere their 
intuitions and aspire to live holily, their own i)iety 
explains every fact, every word. 

How easily these old worships of Moses, of 
Zoroaster, of Menu, of Socrates, domesticate them- 
selves in the mind. I cannot find any antiquity 
in them. They are mine as much as theirs. 

Then I have seen the first monks and anchorets 
without crossing seas or centuries. More than 
once some individual has appeared to me with 
such negligence of labor and such commanding 
contemplation, a haughty beneficiary, begging in 
the name of God, as made good to the nineteenth 
century Simeon the Stylite, the Thebais,^ and the 
first Capuchins. 

The priestcraft of the East and West, of the 
Magian, Brahmin, Druid, and Inca, is expounded 
in the individual's private life. The cramping 
influence of a hard formalist on a young child in 
repressing his spirits and courage, paralyzing the 
understanding, and that without producing indig- 
nation, but only fear and obedience, and even 
much sympathy with the tyranny, — is a familiar 
fact explained to the child when he becomes a 
man, only by seeing that the oppressor of his youth 
is himself a child tyrannized over by those names 
and words and forms, of whose influence he was 

1 The abode of Egyptian hermits and anchorites. 



AMERICAN ESSAYS . 247 

merely the organ to the youth. The fact teaches 
him how Belus was worshiped, and how the pyra- 
mids were built, better than the discovery by 
Champollion of the names of all the workmen 
and the cost of every tile. He finds Assyria and 
the mounds of Cholula at his door, and himself 
has laid the courses. 

Again in that protest which each considerate 
person makes against the superstition of his time, 
he reacts step for step the part of old reformers, 
and in the search after truth finds like them new 
perils to virtue. He learns again what moral 
vigor is needed to supply the girdle of a supersti- 
tion. A great licentiousness treads on the heels 
of a reformation. How many times in the history 
of the world has the Luther of the day had to 
lament the decay of piety in his own household. 
" Doctor," said his wife to Martin Luther one day, 
'^ how is it that whilst subject to papacy, we prayed 
so often and with such fervor, whilst now we pray 
with the utmost coldness and very seldom ? " 

The advancing man discovers how deep a prop- 
erty he hath in all literature, — in all fable as well 
as in all history. He finds that the poet was no 
odd fellow who described strange and impossible 
situations, but that universal man wrote by his 
pen a confession true for one and true for all. 
His own secret biography he finds in lines wonder- 
fully intelligible to* him, yet dotted down before 
he was born. One after another he comes up in 



248 , HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

his private adventures with every fable of ^sop, 
of Homer, of Hafiz, of Ariosto, of Chaucer, of Scott, 
and verifies them with his own head and hands. 

The beautiful fables of the Greeks, being proper 
creations of the Imagination and not of the Fancy, 
are universal verities. What a range of meanings 
and what perpetual pertinence has the story of 
Prometheus ! Beside its primary value as the first 
chapter of the history of Europe (the mythology 
thinly veiling authentic facts, the invention of 
the mechanic arts, and the migration of colonies), 
it gives the history of religion with some closeness 
to the faith of later ages. Prometheus is the 
Jesus of the old mythology. He is the friend of 
man ; stands between the unjust " justice " of the 
Eternal Father, and the race of mortals ; and 
readily suffers all things on their account. But 
where it departs from the Calvinistic Christianity, 
and exhibits him as the defier of Jove, it repre- 
sents a state of mind which readily appears wher- 
ever the doctrine of Theism is taught in a crude, 
objective form, and which seems the self-defense 
of man against this untruth, namely, a discontent 
with the believed fact that a God exists, and a 
feeling that the obligation of reverence is onerous. 
It would steal, if it could, the fire of the Creator, 
and live apart from him, and independent of him. 
The " Prometheus Vinctus " ^ is the romance of 
skepticism. Not less true to all time are all 

1 Of JEschylus. 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 249 

details of that stately apologue. Apollo kept the 
flocks of Admetus, said the poets. Every man is 
a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool. It 
seems as if heaven had sent its insane angels into 
our world as to an asylum, and here they will break 
out into their native music and utter at intervals 
the words they have heard in heaven; then the 
mad fit returns, and they mope and wallow like 
dogs. When the gods come among men, they 
are not known. Jesus was not; Socrates and 
Shakespeare were not. Antseus was suffocated 
by the grip of Hercules, but every time he 
touched his mother earth, his strength was re- 
newed. Man is the broken giant, and in all 
his weakness, both his body and his mind are 
invigorated by habits of conversation with nature. 
The power of music, the power of poetry to unfix, 
and, as it were, clap wings to all solid nature, 
interprets the riddle of Orpheus, which was to 
his childhood an idle tale. The philosophical 
perception of identity through endless mutations 
of form makes him know the Proteus. What 
else am I who laughed or wept yesterday, who 
slept last night like a corpse, and this morning 
stood and ran? And what see I on any side 
but the transmigrations of Proteus? I can sym- 
bolize my thought by using the name of any crea- 
ture, of any fact, because every creature is man, 
agent or patient. ' Tantalus is but a name for 
you and me. Tantalus means the impossibility 



260 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

of drinking the waters of thought which are 
always gleaming and waving within sight of 
the soul. The transmigration of souls : that too 
is no fable. I would it were; but men and 
women are only half human. Every animal of 
the barn-yard, the field and the forest, of the 
earth and of the waters that are under the 
earth, has contrived to get a footing and to 
leave the print of its features and form in some 
one or other of these upright, heaven-facing 
speakers. Ah, brother, hold fast to the man 
and awe the beast; stop the ebb of thy soul — 
ebbing downward into the forms into whose 
habits thou hast now for many years slid. As 
near and proper to us is also that old fable of 
the Sphinx, who was said to sit in the roadside 
and put riddles to every passenger. If the man 
could not answer she swallowed him alive. If 
he could solve the riddle, the Sphinx was slain. 
What is our life but an endless flight of winged 
facts or events ! In splendid variety these changes 
come, all putting questions to the human spirit. 
Those men who cannot answer by a superior 
wisdom these facts or questions of time, serve 
them. Facts incumber them, tyrannize over 
them, and make the men of routine, the men of 
sense^ in whom a literal obedience to facts has 
extinguished every spark of that light by which 
man is truly man. But if the man is true to 
his better instincts or sentiments, and refuses 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 251 

the dominion of facts, as one that comes of a 
higher race, remains fast by the soul and sees 
the principle, then the facts fall aptly and supple 
into their places ; they know their master, and 
the meanest of them glorifies him. 

See in Goethe's " Helena " ^ the same desire that 
every word should be a thing. These figures, he 
would say, the Chirons, Griffins, Pliorkyas, Helen, 
and Leda, are somewhat, and do exert a specific 
influence on the mind. So far then are they eter- 
nal entities, as real to-day as in the first Olympiad. 
Much revolving them, he writes out freely his 
humor, and gives them body to his own imagina- 
tion. And although that poem be as vague and 
fantastic as a dream, yet it is much more attractive 
than the more regular dramatic pieces of the same 
author, for the reason that it operates a wonderful 
relief to the mind from the routine of customary 
images, — awakens the reader's invention and 
fancy by the wild freedom of the design, and by 
the unceasing succession of brisk shocks of surprise. 

The universal nature, too strong for the petty 
nature of the bard, sits on his neck and writes 
through his hand; so that when he seems to vent 
a mere caprice and wild romance, the issue is an 
exact allegory. Hence Plato said that ''poets 
utter great and wise things which they do not 
themselves understand." All the fictions of the 
Middle Age explain themselves as a masked or 

1 The second part of '' Faust." 



252 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

frolic expression of that which in grave earnest 
the mind of that period toiled to achieve. Magic, 
and all that is ascribed to it, is manifestly a deep 
presentiment of the powers of science. The shoes 
of swiftness, the sword of sharpness, the power of 
subduing the elements, of using the secret virtues 
of minerals, of understanding the voices of birds, 
are the obscure efforts of the mind in a right di- 
rection. The preternatural prowess of the hero, 
the gift of perpetual youth, and the like, are alike 
the endeavor of the human spirit "to bend the 
shows of things to the desires of the mind." 

In " Perceforest " and " Amadis de Gaul," a gar- 
land and a rose bloom on the head of her who is 
faithful, and fade on the brow of the inconstant. 
In the story of " The Boy and the Mantle," even a 
mature reader may be surprised with a glow of 
virtuous pleasure at the triumph of the gentle 
Genelas ; and indeed, all the postulates of elfin an- 
nals, that the Fairies do not like to be named ; that 
their gifts are capricious and not to be trusted ; 
that w^ho seeks a treasure must not speak ; and the 
like, I find true in Concord, however they might 
be in Cornwall or Bretagne. 

Is it otherwise in the newest romance ? I read 
"The Bride of Lammermoor." Sir William Ash- 
ton is a mask for a vulgar temptation. Ravens wood 
Castle, a fine name for proud poverty, and the 
foreign mission of state only a Bunyan disguise ^ 

1 Only an allegorical expression. 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 253 

for honest industry. We may all shoot a wild 
bull that would toss the good and beautiful, by 
fighting down the unjust and sensual. Lucy Ash- 
ton is another name for fidelity, which is always 
beautiful and always liable to calamity in this 
world. 

But along with the civil and metaphysical his- 
tory of man, another history goes daily forward 
— that of the external world — in which he is not 
less strictly implicated. He is the compend of 
time : he is also the correlative of nature. The 
power of man consists in the multitude of his 
affinities, in the fact that his life is intertwined 
with the whole chain of organic and inorganic 
being. In the age of the Caesars, out from the 
Forum at Rome proceeded the great highways 
north, south, east, west to the center of every 
province of the empire, making each market-town 
of Persia, Spain, and Britain, pervious to the sol- 
diers of the capital ; so out of the human heart 
go, as it were, highways to the heart of every 
object in nature, to reduce it under the dominion 
of man. A man is a bundle of relations, a knot 
of roots, whose flower and fruitage is the world. 
All his faculties refer to natures out of him. All 
his faculties predict the world he is to inhabit, 
as the fins of the fish foreshow that water exists, 
or the wings of an eagle in the egg presuppose a 
medium like air. > Insulate and you destroy him. 
He cannot live without a world. Put Napoleon 



254 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

in an island prison, let his faculties find no men 
to act on, no Alps to climb, no stake to play for, 
and he would beat the air and appear stupid. 
Transport him to large countries, dense popula- 
tion, complex interests, and antagonistic power, 
and you shall see that the man Napoleon, bounded, 
that is, by such a profile and outline, is not the 
virtual Napoleon. This is but Talbot's shadow : — 

'' His substance is not here : 
For what you see is but the smallest part, 
And least proportion of humanity : 
But were the whole frame here, 
It is of such a spacious, lofty pitch, 
Your roof were not sufficient to contain it." 

Henry IV. 

Columbus needs a planet to shape his course 
upon. Newton and Laplace need myriads of 
ages and thick-strown celestial areas. One may 
say a gravitating solar system is already prophe- 
sied in the nature of Newton's mind. Not less 
does the brain of Davy and Gay Lussac from 
childhood exploring always the afiinities and 
repulsions of particles, anticipate the laws of or- 
ganization. Does not the eye of the human em- 
bryo predict the light ? the ear of Handel predict 
the witchcraft of harmonic sound ? Do not the 
constructive fingers of Watt, Fulton, Whittemore, 
Arkwright predict the fusible, hard, and temper- 
able texture of metals, the properties of stone, 
water, and wood ? the lovely attributes of the 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 255 

maiden child predict the refinements and decora- 
tions of civil society ? Here also we are reminded 
of the action of man on man. A mind might pon- 
der its thoughts for ages, and not gain so much 
self-knowledge as a passion of love shall teach 
it in a day. Who knows himself before he has 
been thrilled with indignation at an outrage, or 
has heard an eloquent tongue, or has shared the 
throb of thousands in a national exultation or 
alarm ? No man can antedate his experience, or 
guess what faculty or feeling a new object shall 
unlock, any more than he can draw to-day the 
face of a person whom he shall see to-morrow for 
the first time. 

I will not now go behind the general statement 
to explore the reason of this correspondency. 
Let it suffice that in the light of these two facts, 
namely, that the mind is One, and that nature 
is its correlative, history is to be read and 
written. 

Thus in all ways does the soul concentrate and 
reproduce its treasures for each pupil, for each 
new-born man. He, too, shall pass through the 
whole cycle of experience. He shall collect into 
a focus the rays of nature. History no longer 
shall be a dull book. It shall walk incarnate in 
every just and wise man. You shall not tell me 
by languages and titles a catalogue of the volumes 
you have read, You shall make me feel what 
periods you have lived. A man shall be the Tern- 



256 HAWTHORNE CLASSICS 

pie of Fame.^ He shall walk, as the poets have 
described that goddess, in a robe painted all over 
with wonderful events and experiences ; his own 
form and features by their exalted intelligence 
shall be that variegated vest. I shall find in him 
the Fore-world ; in his childhood the Age of 
Gold ; the Apples of Knowledge ; the Argonautic 
Expedition ; the calling of Abraham ; the build- 
ing of the Temple ; the Advent of Christ ; Dark 
Ages ; the Revival of Letters ; the Reformation ; 
the discovery of new lands, the opening of new 
sciences, and new regions in man. He shall be 
the priest of Pan,^ and bring with him into hum- 
ble cottages the blessing of the morning stars and 
all the recorded benefits of heaven and earth. 

Is there somewhat overweening in this claim ? 
Then I reject all I have written, for what is the 
use of pretending to know what we know not? 
But it is the fault of our rhetoric that Ave cannot 
strongly state one fact without seeming to believe 
some other. I hold our actual knowledge very 
cheap. Hear the rats in the wall, see the lizard 
on the fence, the fungus under foot, the lichen 
on the log. What do I know sympathetically, 
morally, of either of these worlds of life ? As 
long as the Caucasian man — perhaps longer — 
these creatures have kept their counsel beside 

1 He shall himself have experienced the great things done by 
great men. 

2 Emerson thinks of him according to his name, as the god of all 
things. 



AMERICAN ESSAYS 257 

him, and there is no record of any word or sign 
that has passed from one to the other. Nay, 
what does history yet record of the metaphysical 
annals of man ? What light does it shed on those 
mysteries which we hide under the names Death 
and Immortality? Yet every history should be 
written in a wisdom which divined the range of 
our affinities and looked on facts as symbols. I 
am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale 
our so-called History is. How many times we 
must say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople ? 
What does Rome know of rat and lizard ? What 
are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighbor- 
ing systems of being ? Nay, what food or experi- 
ence or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal 
hunter, for the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisher- 
man, the stevedore, the porter? 

Broader and deeper we must write our annals 
— from an ethical reformation, from an influx of 
the ever new, ever sanative conscience — if we 
would trulier express our central and wide-related 
nature, instead of this old chronology of selfish- 
ness and pride to which we have too long lent 
our eyes. Already that day exists for us, shines 
in on us at unawares, but the path of science and 
of letters is not the way into nature, but from 
it, rather. The idiot, the Indian, the child, and 
unschooled farmer's boy, come much nearer to 
these, — understand them better than the dis- 
sector or the antiquary. 



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